Hi friends. I was supposed to have a productive day yesterday (and today, and again tomorrow). Instead ICE murdered someone in a wonderful little city an hour and a bit down the road from me.

Now to be fair, they didn’t mean to kill that specific man. They were trying to abduct someone else entirely! They just didn’t bother to check. At all. Before they shot someone dead in the street. Because they don’t care. They are here to cause terror and do harm, and they’re doing exactly what they came here to do. And they know there are no consequences for their actions.

So instead of abducting the person they came to kidnap, they killed a different brown man. In front of his three year old daughter.

It was the first thing I heard about when I looked at my phone yesterday. And it was all I could think about all day long. Because Maine is one big small town, and I know exactly where that happened. It’s a couple streets over from the bakery where I got the best danish of my life, just down the road from the yarn store I’ve been wanting to visit, a minute or two from where the artist who made one of my most treasured possession lives.

And no, it absolutely shouldn’t hit different when it happens close to home! This is no less horrible than all the other people ICE has murdered or abducted or assaulted or intimidated (or than all the people the police have done the same to for the entirety of their existence). Just like the abduction of the owner of the teeny tiny grocery store in the town down the road from me (the closest grocery store to my house) last month shouldn’t feel any different than the ongoing abductions of thousands of other people across the country.

But I am an imperfect human. And it does feel worse when it’s closer to home. And wow did I not get a damn thing done yesterday. Today isn’t looking great either.

And I am sorry! Because I love my job and want to do it well (and have an inbox full of stuff that needs a response and a to do list of alarming length). But also I sort of feel like it’s completely appropriate to be knocked out when the government murders someone. For no reason. By accident. For the second time this month.

And I kinda suspect some of you might be having a rough time of it too. So if that’s you, please know you are not alone. This is not normal. And it’s completely ok for you to not be ok.

The only way this stops is if enough of us fight back hard enough. My body does not allow me to go stand outside in 95° heat. So all I can do is today is call my representatives and tell them to fucking well do something (and remind absolutely everyone I can that this blood is on Susan Collins’ hands come November), and throw money at the groups in the area I know are helping.

If anyone wants to rage donate somewhere along with me, the folks at Project Relief Maine have been doing tremendous work since the first ICE surge earlier this year and will put your money to good use (as will Presente! Maine, another organization doing vital mutual aid work with newcomers to the area).

Take care of yourself, hold your people tight, check on your friends, watch out for your neighbors, and don’t pretend any of this is normal.