Zellous reflects on Orlando mass shooting with powerful piece

New York Liberty guard and Orlando native Shavonte Zellous wrote on The Players' Tribune a powerful piece a few days after a mass shooting in Orlando which claimed 50 lives.

Zellous detailed a conversation she had with her sister, and also shared her emotions about the tragedy.
"Gay clubs are more than places where people dance and drink. They are sanctuaries. They are communities. Gay clubs are where many go to find themselves or be themselves or commune with others like themselves, away from the judgment of the world outside. 
If you’ve never understood a bar as a refuge, then maybe you’ve never felt the fear of showing affection to someone in public. 
In a club’s darkness, there’s freedom. With freedom of self comes something like light. Out of light comes love."
Zellous added that after the incident, she vows to carry a responsibility of thinking about her LGBTQ family and their safety.
"When you’re gay or trans or queer, you carry the hate of others with you every day. It comes in many forms: insults, discrimination, ignorance, violence. I would imagine this wasn’t the first time the victims of Pulse had felt terrorized just for being themselves. 
It’s cliché to say, I never thought this would happen where I’m from. But … I didn’t. Maybe I’ve been blissfully ignorant all along. 
When I see Orlando on the news now — the downtown skyline, the streets I ran — I don’t recognize it. Instead, it’s a funhouse version where everything has been turned upside down. It’s distorted and foreign. 
I’m going to look at it differently for the rest of my life. 
I’m going to think about my safety and the safety of my LGBTQ family differently for the rest of my life.
For both of those reasons, I carry sadness the size of a mother’s grief. 
Which is to say: Immeasurable."

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