Last night’s massacre at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando makes me scared, and I don’t know how to deal.

I can’t deal with not being able to be openly gay in self-segregated locales during the only month deemed acceptable in the calendar year; the fact that a mass murder of an entire community of queer people of color is being used to fuel further aggression toward other people of color; and that the American public is not doing any soul searching to ways that their own laws and beliefs facilitate this kind of violence.

I’ve sat a Christian dinner tables that refused to acknowledge me; straight white people have asked horribly intrusive questions about my sex life as if my whole being is their domain; and Kevin and I still get called faggots if we’re holding hands in public.

Hell, my being engaged was impossible for the first couple years I left college.

This is not about ISIS.

The Klan would do this. Nazis would do this. A disgruntled guy at work who shops for guns on the clock at Corporate Anywhere USA might do this. This is about the first person with the means to do it just going out and doing this. It was just a matter of time.

If you know someone gay and this makes you scared for their safety, don’t rally to kill whoever you think is responsible.

Just hold us close, and let us know you love us.

No one else will.

In fact, they might just come and kill us.