In between two worlds…

There is a code in the hood: you stay true to where you come from. The people expect it. Loyalty is not allowed to fade. You love that world and all that comes with it. When you are not a part of that world, then you must be an outsider. Being loyal to a community is like keeping family traditions. Every Thanksgiving the family roasts a stuffed chicken; and every Christmas the family gathers at an aging aunt’s house for a piece of traditional pumpkin pie. Don’t do the chicken or the pie or the aunt’s house and you cease to be family. In the hood, the tradition is to stay there. If you decide not to stay put, you must be an outsider. I’ve become an outsider. My loyalty is questioned. People assume that I-think-I am-better-than-them. But that’s not true. What they are doing is what sociologists call "meaning-making" me. Yet the other world in which I live hasn’t officially embraced me. There I am required to have a piece of paper to be fully embraced; and I don’t have that. Without that piece of paper, the little black girl is not taken seriously. There I am patronized. I am neither here nor there. I am alone, trying to figure out where I am, to which world I commit. Nowhere is lonely.