w h o am i now?

we took a trip back home to Jamaica. I don't think I've been there in almost four years. It's amazing how time can change one's feelings and perceptions. four years ago things were simple. I wasn't bothered. We spent time at my uncles three villas completely alone with the exception of busboy who would take me horse back riding. There's about an acre of land in the front full of grass and a gazebo and a white fence that's rickety but you still want to run your fingers down it. There's another acre with cows and goats....that are wild and free. Then there's almost an alley way and a road shaded by green trees. Fruit trees galore. Ackees and Mangos, Grapefruits and Coconuts. There's a huge hill and then a pasture where Busboy once showed me a flower that closed at ones touch and opened when left alone. I swam all day and ran all night.

But four years later and the place is in ruins. Unkempt because no one can keep it and people with mean hearts abuse my uncles trust and take advantage of his misfortune. They steal the sheets, the tv's, and the furniture for crack and food. One has to live I guess. The fence is more rickety, the roof leaks, we can't stay.

Funny how things change. Funny how I used this to run away and found my pleasure in fleeing only telling my grandma of our departure and leaving everyone to take notice. I like the act of fleeing....I like my distance. I fled away from men calling at me, commenting on my hair, boys smiling at me, boys I never care much about. I fled away from awkward conversation and loneliness and I kind of ran into it full force. All those comments and compliments and harassment's began to to blend into each other at the resort and i wanted to go into the room and not return. I didn't feel pretty.....I felt odd. All i wanted to do was be left alone for once and it followed me only this time it asked me where I was from rather than where I was headed. My loneliness steadily followed. I tried so hard to feel things at times. I felt so bad for my mother who has to put up with my chronic misery, has to look the other way when i sigh, has to pull me off her arm as I beg to follow her everywhere when she just wants to be left alone.

But there were good parts...just like there always is. Bursts of fun and happiness and feeling so short and clear that I almost have to tell my brain to capsulate every color for the bad times that soon return.

I felt like I was beginning to lose myself. Who I am. There's such a great divide between growing up in brooklyn with a million and one other West Indian descented children with similar accents, similar foods, and common ground and after show food and restaurants and shows. There's nothing to compare between the parties I once frequented and this culture I've found myself in and want to keep. So i lost it. I was starting to consider myself an American.....(though I am) and almost pushed away the dance hall and the reggae in my mind. Because in many ways I can't blend the two....at least not now. So going there and hitching a ride with my mom to the real Jamaica...not the tourist "one love, one heart" bullshit and walking in the street with a million other souls getting lost in it again and buying fruits and just going somewhere different and soulful was so good. Driving down the road again listening to "This Is War" by The Dangerous Summer and believing in myself with the wind in my hair and the mountain and the everlasting fucking greenery was so.....n e e d e e d. I needed to be proud again. Because Jamaica is my second home. It's where my Mom grew up and went to school. It's where my uncles met their first girlfriends and my grandmother grew up and made sacrifices and felt more struggle and heartache than i could ever bear. It's heart and it's real so I will always love it....because I have the very best of both worlds. I can go to a show and not get one second glance, go to the projects in Brooklyn and not stick out like a sore thumb, AND I can go to a small island with a big heart and belong. It was nice to see my picture on the walls of old women I hadn't seen since I was in diapers. Lovely to be touched and told to stay sweet and pretty.

So it was a lot. Things changed but what doesn't? I guess I'm learning to take life as it comes. Flee the scene if I choose to....wallow in my sadness for days...smile as I feel the air and the smoke hit my skin but always remember who raised me: my grandma and where I come from. Because this trip was in fact my life....a great struggle between myself and my expectations laid out in front of me like a sign.