I can't seem to fall asleep, and Justin's voice keeps haunting me with his lyrics. I really am afraid tonight. My heart races, my breath is shallow. I just saw a video on YouTube where a man gets his arm chopped off with a machete and it gets fed to a lion, flannel sleeve and all. Another man's face is literally melting off as he screams and writhes in agony on a dirty floor. His cries are inhuman as he claws at his face in a vain effort to get rid of the acid that's consuming his flesh. The video clip jumps to a scene where a man is dragged, half-dead, to a huge metal barrel. He is crammed into it and drenched in gasoline by men with cruel grins. As he's set ablaze and begins to scream, a distraught woman is forced to watch, terrified. Her screams are still ringing in my ears. She knew then, and I knew as I watched, that she was next. "NO! NOOOO!" she wept, whether for herself or for the man, I don't know. What maddened me was knowing that these were this woman's last moments of life - this is no movie. The clip was from a documentary filmed along the US-Mexico border back in 2008. It is about the drug cartels, and most of the footage was filmed in Nuevo Laredo, home of relatives from both sides of my family. Most still live there. It's just a 3-hour drive from here. And as though that weren't horrible enough, now the violence is spreading to this side of the frontera.

That's what I don't think people realize. The violence is coming here. The drug cartels are recruiting high school kids from American schools. And now that �ngel's started Pre-K, it worries me. Terrifies me, makes me sick. Time goes by so fast, and these kiddos are gonna grow sooner than I'd like. I don't want this filth touching them. I know of so many people this has affected already, including family. I fear for my kin. I fear for their future, that of my sister's children. I am aware that fleeing this region won't help. Not that we even have the money to do so.