Headed Home

I will be leaving for home in four days; back to NYC. I have made several trips back to visit friends that are like family but I have mostly stayed away from my family. It's just been too hard a journey to make. And now that I am finally making this trip after more then five years, I am filled with so many mixed emotions.

I was raised by my grandmother from the time I was about six months old. My mother, still in her teens herself, was too busy having fun to be bothered with the responsibilities of raising a child. I had two older siblings who shared the same fate as myself. and two more were to follow after me as well.

My dad was around in that, he lived around the block. But mostly he was absent from our lives.  The most memories I have of him was his coming over to administer spankings or asking us for part of our allowance that he promised to pay back, and of course he never did. I associate so much disappointment with him.

But my grandmother. She was my rock. She often went without so that we could have.  Always doing the very best she could for us, although her health wasn't the greatest and it's easy to see why she wouldn't be your ideal candidate for raising five little hellions. She made it work though.

My siblings and I didn't really fit in growing up. Or maybe I can't speak for them but I can certainly speak for myself in saying I never really felt accepted by my family. There was something almost palpably different about me. It was as if I exuded something that kept others away. And I never really felt at home, never connected with my aunts in uncles.

This was really brought home to me when I finally made  a mecca back over five years ago. Visiting my family, i felt acutely uneasy and out of place. I didn't feel any connection and felt more like I didn't belong. I didn't know these people and they didn't know me. Nor was there any strong desire on either sides to get to know each other. Everything felt so forced. I left NYC and never went back to see them again.

But now, I am making this trip again as I have heard my grandmother, the only true family I feel I have, is not doing so well. And it scares me so much to think about it. If something were to happen to her, I would truly be an orphan in this world. Crazy as that sounds.

I have a mother who is very much alive, a father as well. And plenty of aunts and uncles. But I will feel like I have no one. Aside from my sister, Shaniqua, I am not really connected to anyone else. I even caught myself at one point wishing it was my mother or father even, and not my grandmother. I know that is terrible. And I don't really wish that kind of pain on anyone else. But I guess, if it has to be anyone, just not let it be her.

So I am getting on that train and making the journey home. And its more then a little scary for me for so many reasons. I pray that my grandmother will be okay. More then anything I want her to get through this. Mostly for selfish reasons. I am not ready for world in which she doesn't exist.  Lord just help me get through this week. And please, please, don't take my grandma away from me.