When I went back to look at the piece, it evoked a little emotion from me. My teacher asked for more background... and unlocking the memories I chose to put away was a little painful. I acknowledged some of things in my past that is key to analyzing who I am today.
Can you hear my voice now?
I have never been alone. This is my immediate thought as my black Toyota-- filled with snacks, a loaded iPod, and 3 suitcases of clothing—enters onto I-94. It’s pouring. Many romantic novels use water to symbolize a baptism. I watched the raindrops fall unto my car at such a thick and rapid pace. At one point, I seemed to be submerged underwater, struggling with the idea of being in solitude. This simple Labor Day weekend trip to Nashville turned into something more. It became my voyage to self-discovery.
It rains throughout the majority of Indiana. How could I be on the road with two people and still feel alone? I try to think of what that word even means. My ships (the endearing term for line sisters) and I interject brief, non-linear sentences about being single. After the first exposure to true love, “it’s hard for me to believe that I will ever find someone else,” my ship summarizes perfectly. I convinced myself that I beat those odds. Everyone says that women find their husbands in college. I had an advantage. My high school sweetheart filled my world with everything I needed, serving as my best friend and companion. I didn’t need to find “the husband” in college. Though, I spoke too soon. Those attributes which kept me in love with him, left me vulnerable. I transitioned from the familiar and friendly faces of my predominantly black high school into the diverse new world of college. Afraid, I relied on his comfort. But, he was not there.
On the tail-end of I-65, the clouds disappeared to unveil the morning sun. My urban up-bringing sheltered me from the beauty of the rural south. “Welcome to Kentucky.” The fields of green grass sprout with hints of autumn. This warmth sends me into the past. I remember my childhood. I sat near the phone on summer days, anxious for my mother to say I can come back now because she’s home from work. Disappointment. She spent her free-time with her boyfriend’s family. I lied in my granny’s bed those nights. Nightmares occurred at an early age, but I awakened to my granny’s smile and invitation to watch Arsenio Hall or Oprah. I played with the neighborhood kids under the loving eye of my grandmother. Her motto: if I can’t see you, you’ve gone too far. December 5th will mark the fourth year of my search for her. Afraid of change, I relied on her words for support in my transition into adulthood. But, I can no longer see her… she is not here.
Nashville served its purpose, unexpectedly. The most life-changing moment happened at Carnton Plantation. My first visit to a slave plantation brought me back to reality. The richness of battered hands and broken families lay fresh in the door handles of the slave cabins as we reflected upon our history. Somehow, despite the unfathomable conditions of losing loved ones to grave bearings (human auctions or death), slaves maintained an individual strength resulting in both self-reliance and an ability to adapt to change for their survival.
Back on the road and again confronted with my thoughts. I’ve moved in a circular pattern through the last four years. Emotionally exposed, I refused to deal with the changes in my life and found comfort in the first warm smile on campus. The instability of that friendship placed me where I am now. I am single and my grandmother is gone. My mother lives in Florida with my sister’s family, leaving me in Evanston. For the first time in 21 years, I’m bombarded with no sense of home, no sense of where I belong. I am alone internally; lacking self-reliance because I looked to others to fill that void in the past. I walked out of my car with the desire to be alone. I need a strong loving and reliable relationship with myself to not feel disappointment when loved ones cannot be there for me. This trip began with heavy rain, yet resulted in a new attitude. The quest for self-reliance begins this fall.
This personal essay is GREAT!!! Seriously, well written and all.... Good Job! And it actually inspired me to trust in myself because I will always be here for myself... Thanks Tiff!
ReplyDeletebeautifully writter. i so hear your voice.
ReplyDeleteSo I copied your personal essay today, had to, needed to make it bigger cause my eyes are blurry from too much sleep or not enough. So I’m looking at the words now, after the fact, font size large, screen size larger, and I’m thinking your first sentence tells it all – being alone and realizing you’re alone are two completely different, but connected things. The baptism of voyage, the rain and all make miles I’m guessing, not knowing if you’re talking about driving from Oakland to Nashville or some other beginning and ending. I like the water metaphor. It rains a lot in my personal stories too only I can’t seem to get the windshield wipers to work right or keep the road in focus. Is that what those white lines are for?
ReplyDeleteI keep tripping over myself. I check my shoes even though I bought them precisely because they didn’t have laces. I think my uncertainty makes me twice left footed because I don’t know whether to keep on through this inspired ramble-on or just tell you how much I’ve enjoyed reading about your happenings.
So I continue like I didn’t just write that. I tell myself writing is part of breathing and even if this gets lost somewhere between this, what, place, this make-believe place, I don’t think so but I keep going back to it like an Oakland sidewalk I haven’t seen up close before, just passing by to somewhere else. But I read on and write on because right now it’s eleven twenty-two and I can’t get back to the finding the job thing right now.
So I’m following you, alone in a car full of people. I like that thought. I often say it similarly but with different people, in a room not a car, in a situation I know I can walk away from but choose not to until it’s too late and I have to answer to someone, anyone. The idea of being closed in seems right, the kind of place I mean where you meet people, find relationship people, even end up attached people but I think it better to avoid that old cliché because there are some parts of your life where being alone is the best it is ever going to get because you don’t know any more than you hope for.
I haven’t made the effort to know your age but I remember nights like that, Arsenio’s big ass smile, not Oprah though, couldn’t get that, eluded me though I can see where she was then as a direct comment on where she was heading, is. “If I can’t see you, you’ve gone too far,” words to live by for sure no matter what kind of upbringing you have to keep your memories in – like a worn out old box, dog ears, torn and tapped too many times but not enough to keep your things from spilling out.
I cannot go to Carnton, I have no business there and realize in my realizing, I must return with dusty steps to what the Spanish call the “apple orchard” for some kind of some kind, here in California’s Owens Valley at the foot of the Sierra Nevadas. Manzanar, sixty some odd seventy years ago where ‘we’ put the Japanese, where ‘we’ employed the term ‘forced relocation’ like it didn’t mean what it meant and someone wasn’t going to remember enough about it to write it down for later, for shame.
Damn right words there, “no sense of home, no sense of where I belong.” I find your words again and then let them go. I have to continue this journey you started, this journey you shared and keep on with my own now because I have to share, because twenty-one years is a long time but my ten years seems longer, no Florida relatives here though I spent a handful of years in Belle Glade some decades ago.
Best in your quest just beginning after this one. I’m mid-road and stepping, I’m listening and wondering when the rain is going to leave me the way it left you.