Time

Last night I sat on my couch and watched the junior senator from Illinois tell the world that he would be the democratic nominee for President of the United States. The world will never be the same.

Eight weeks ago I was walking home from an event. Walking down a street I have walked down countless times. I was mugged. I was pushed to the ground, repeatedly hit and robbed. I am the survivor of a violent crime. It took several weeks but I no longer feel the pain in my ankle that was injured that night. It has been healed. However, I will never be the same.

In one month I will make my first trip back to Mississippi since I was in elementary school. It has been nearly twenty years since I stepped on the soil where my mother’s mother was born and raised. The same city limits where my father lived his entire life. In Mississippi, in the heart of Sunflower County, that is where my roots are. There is both excitement and anxiety that surrounds this voyage for me. I will see family members I haven’t seen in years. I will meet extended family members that I have never met. I have decided that I will visit my father’s mother. I will be my most natural self. I will present to them my authentic self. I doubt that I will ever be the same.