Thank you for those kind comments on my last post. It feels like a slap in my face that here I am trying to help the homeless yet I can't do nothing for my own mother. I feel so helpless. What am I supposed to do that I haven't already done. My mom didn't go to the Airport last nite like she told me she would. She spent the night in Downtown Atlanta at Woodruff Park but she said she made a couple of friends. She said that the security is tight at the Airport and they may kick her out if she is loitering.

What am I supposed to do? I don't have money or even a home for myself. Job Corps won't let my mom stay on center. Sometimes I feel as if my life is pointless, meaningless and worthless. If I can't help my mom then how can I help others?

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Well my mom who had a place to stay for a month is now homeless. She has been homeless since January but Project Connect paid for her to have a place to stay for 1 month and Today that month is up. It seems like she just moved in really and now its already up. Since I stay at Job Corps, I am holding some of her stuff for her and am getting her food. One of my friends from school works at McDonalds and hooked her up with a drink while I paid for her meal. My mom is diabetic and her nerves are dying in her legs but the doc won't declare her disabled. Tonight, she is staying the night at the Airport. I hope she will be in a good shelter tomorrow--not the Ellis Street Shelter where she was verbally abused.

I don't know what to do. I hold down a part time job but I don't get paid enough to put her in those rent by the week places they have around here. I just don't know what else to do exccept pray and God just doesn't seem to be listening right now.

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Among the things I did today--the luckiest day of the century some people say because of 7/7/07--was take a train ride on the MARTA North Springs train. After we left the Lindbergh station, we were out of the tunnel and the mountains rose. And I remembered my longing to come home to Georgia, to find my family, my father, to finally be accepted by them as one of them. I forgot the bayou sunsets, jambalaya, jamborees and festivals of Mardi Gras that I was raised around. I remembered the mountains and the land called to my soul. I knew that I was where I belonged--in North Georgia; as far north as the MARTA system will take you.

My mother was born and raised in Gordon County, and my father in Cobb County. I was born in Cartersville, GA--Bartow County but I know nothing about them. Nothing about the family that I want to be a part of except this one fact--they want nothing to do with me and denied that they knew of me. My mother's cousins and other relatives except for one all denied they knew of my existance. My 3rd cousin Haley told me in so many words to never call her back on our second phone call. And my father says that I am not his daughter.

Our family abandoned us and a part of me hates them, especialy my father and his family who pretty much gave me the cold shoulder since he never mentioned my mother or me to them. They were more polite toward me than my own cousin but the hostility and coldness was there in their voice. I was not wanted. My birth was a mistake to them.

Because of that, I was homeless as a child, and a survivor of Hurricane Rita, and classified as a Katrina victim by the Job Corps system since my landlord kicked me out to benefit from Kevin Costner's movie The Guardian, which bought out two floors of his building. I was not the only one booted, I later heard. If it wasn't for those hurricanes, I would probably have kept my apartment since I paid my rent on time all the time.

I stayed with my best friend from high school for a month and then moved to Atlanta, where my mother already moved to before the hurricanes. And I remember coming into the mountains by bus and having this feeling of rightness; that I was where I belonged. I experienced that again today. This land calls to my soul, my blood, in a way no other place ever could. I may look Creole--hair and light skin color--may have a slight north Louisiana accent that is slowly fading into a north Georgia accent.

I want to do something. I want to prove to my family and my father that I am someone valuable, someone worthy of their love and acceptance, no matter who's child I am or the circumstance of my birth. I want my family to want me. I want my father to apologize for his cruelty in abandoning me. I want to be loved by them and I know that will never happen unless I come into money or fame and then their love will be false. Nothing can buy true love and acceptance. Nothing. I will never have the love of a father or a cousin or an aunt. I will never be comfortable in my own skin if I were to go and visit my family. I would never be welcomed with open arms as the long lost relative. I am Johnna Crider, bastard child of Johnnie Crider and that meant that I was supposed to have been aborted in my family's eyes.

So being in this land that spoke to my soul and made my blood run hot and my heart race with a mixture of hope, longing, and anticipation, was just a fresh reminder that I will never belong in the place I was born so what makes me hope and think that I will ever belong anywhere or be loved for who I really am?

The only thing that helps ease the pain is art. I pour my sadness, bitterness, hurt, pain, and anger into my writing and painting. But it only relieves it temporarily.

I am grateful to my mother who is the only family member I know that loves me--a love that cost her the love of her family and the love of her life--my dad.

I currently stay on Job Corps dorm and have completed the program and attend the advanced training. If it weren't for Job Corps, I would probably be on the streets.

Comment! (2) | Recommend! | Categories: home [t], homesickness [t], rejection [t], family [t], abandonment. Louisiana [t], Georgia [t], North Georgia [t], woods [t], train [t], pain [t], hurt [t], love [t], father [t], mother [t]