4.28.2009

my family

recently "friended" a few cousins - well, second cousins - from my mom's side of the family, both paternal and maternal. growing up mostly away - until "high school" age anyway - i didn't know them. not much anyhow. their world seemed so different, so connected, and so... american. it still does, but in a different way now.

american. it used to connote more disgust than it does now. i was so afraid of being "it". when we came back to the states, there were nights too many that i cried myself to sleep because i felt i would never be happy, and i would definitely never fit in.

then the point came when, in some ways in order to cope, i distanced myself. i created a persona that was above the pointless pop culture and peer pressure, where i looked down on the waste and limited mindset of "my" generation. it was easier. i couldn't get in, so i made staying out a paradise.

it helped to homeschool, and it helped to already be a missionary's kid... i was weird, i was an outsider... so i simply embraced the label i felt placed on me. i was wise beyond my years, above the growing up phase and spiritually mature in a way most teens weren't

hah.

and it hurt when i hit the point one day where i realized, i had no coming of age. i had no time to rebel... i'm still not sure it's necessary, but since then it seems to have become so. when i realized i was no more mature than those around me, maybe even less so, i gave up in a grand way. and i'm not talking about "knowing" more - that i was more naiive than some ( i was)... but that there truly were people my age who could make better, wiser decisions than i could.

ouch.

on the other hand, there have been things that i've never wished away and never regretted. i love african childhood. i love my american childhood too. i am thankful for the family, both african and american who nurtured me and helped shape my unique identity.

it really does hurt sometimes, knowing i missed out, that there are "blood" relatives who missed out on knowing me, and i them. it is strange though, to even begin to imagine my life without the shade of the highland mountains... the beauty of the bvumba and the joy we felt when the rains returned to us... i cannot go back, but i can honor a time in my life that has moved me forward, knowing great joys and sorrows with great gain.

my family is all over. tennessee, oklahoma, estonia, zimbabwe, texas, italy... each place and each person hold a multitude of stories and memories that make up me.

4.26.2009

homesick

i am homesick. grieving for losses i had not acknowledged before. 

loving the life i've lived, and hurting through the moments when no one knew me. 

home, africa, as i knew it - replete with love friends laughter music happiness and the smells and tastes i know best - is gone. 

what i had will never exist in quite the same way again. and since, i have struggled to find it once more, pushed and pulled to tearing the life i have lived so that i might eek out a semblance of what was. 

tonight i am a foreigner in the land i am bred from. this place, i am told, is home. i do not remember it. i do not know it. it does not know me. what i see hurts my heart, and fills me with sadness.

the waste. the anger. the selfishness. the silent secret gnawing and empty pain.

where am i from?

i am from my family's heart, i am from where i'm going to, i am from wherever i am.

but i'm weary, and tired of the going going going. the pushing pushing pushing. this world wearies me,

doesn't it weary you?