I was homeschooled until high school. I was told that the world out there, outside the walls of home and church, had evils I was being saved from. My sophomore year was when the Columbine shootings happened. Overnight, it seemed, my life went from freedom to surveillance. I thought often about how we weren’t allowed to carry backpacks in the halls of our schools anymore, but everything seemed heavier. Our burdens had turned from the physical to the mental. The enemy wasn’t something lurking outside; we were the enemy. Any one of us with a grudge and a gun. ...
