(Saturday afternoon)

I feel broken.

I don�t even know where to go from there. I�m doing what I want to be doing, I�m playing with the people I want to play with, and I�m studying what I want to be studying (fairly successfully, at that). I don�t understand what�s wrong with me. Maybe I�m just homesick. I spoke with Dad today, briefly, and he made me feel better, but I was in tears, crying my eyes out (reluctantly) in front of God and everybody an hour earlier. The worst thing is that I can�t even figure out why I was so upset. Yes, I had a shitty week. Yes, some of my students are frustrating me. Yes, I�m frustrated and stressed out and homesick beyond belief. Yes, I�m all emotional. Yes, I�m all out of money but, ironically, not out of bills (and I have a stalker creditor calling almost every day). And, yes, I�m completely late with my 10-day lesson plan for the self-proclaimed lesson-plan nazi (although I truly enjoy her, the lesson plans to turn in to Dr. Rowland make me freak out). So, maybe I have more on my plate than I�d even like to think about. But I�m not starving by any means, and I have a family that loves me, and the world could be a much worse place to live, so I really don�t know what my problem is.

I saw my grandmother the other day. She�s in her eighties now, living in a nursing home about an hour away from my parents� home. Her memory comes and goes � a nasty side effect of the Alzheimer�s that she�s had for the past 10 years or so � and she doesn�t often recognize the family members who come to see her. So, over Thanksgiving break, I went with my father to see her for the first time in nearly two years. It wasn�t as bad as I thought it would be. She remembered who we were, basically, and she was as gracious and kind as she has ever been. It was difficult, though, because I had basically dehumanized her in my mind; I�d been trying to think of her as the disease and not my grandmother. I�d honestly been thinking of her as gone, somebody who disappeared when my grandfather died four years ago, because her memory is so very touch and go and her behaviors and mentality become those of a small child on and off. But she was having a good day, and � although I told and heard the same stories over and over again � it meant a lot to me to be able to see her and interact with her.

When I was accepted to the Mississippi Teacher Corps, all I wanted to do, the only thing I wanted to do was tell my grandfather because I knew he would have been proud of me. But I couldn�t tell him, and I mourned that loss once again. One of my other grandfathers passed away last January, and it was like losing the first one all over again. The acknowledgement of their passing just crushed me. To be able to tell my grandmother about what I�m doing in Mississippi, to be able to hear her tell me three times how proud she was that I was teaching and working on my Master�s Degree was just phenomenal. Even if she�s forgotten the memory already, and I know that she has, I will always cherish that moment in time in which she gave me the approval I needed from that generation of family, from that side of the family. It�s hard to be half of a family, even if you know that you�re in the right. So I guess that maybe my issue right now is that I�m trying to reconcile myself to the idea that nothing will ever be right again with that family, and that I can�t just ignore the one true thing that she�s always been able to give me, even with her memory faded � love. I was wrong to ignore her, wrong to dismiss her like I did. I don�t know where to go from here. I wish I could ask her forgiveness, but how could she offer forgiveness for something that she doesn�t remember? Would there be a point?