They never really knew me

   I had to do it! I had to get away. I was a single mom living in a city were everyone swore they knew everything there was to know about me. I made arrangement with a lawyer and a friend to watch my child for a term on no longer than one year. Then I headed to my old church’s yearly revival. If I stayed, I knew I would become homicidal. I also knew the church  would have one of their outreach programs so I went and looked at the sign-up board to see who was going were and noticed to young people from France were heading to Miami Beach Florida. Since I had been born in France, I figured okay that will be perfect.  So, knowing I wasn’t going to fulfill my commitment as one of their outreach bible teachers because everything I was hearing about what had been going on the church and watching the ego trips everyone of my old friend was on, I played along got into a van in Ohio with my backpack and suitcase and head to Florida.

    We got there a couple of days later and lovely married couple let me crash on the floor of there bedroom until the other people I had signed up with could get us someplace to stay. A day or two later we moved in to a big house on Miami Beach Island where we were supposed to begin outreach work. By this time, I had gotten a job at Denny’s which was about one mile away from the beach, I couldn’t even afford the right shoes needed for the work but a very kind manager lent me the money until I got my first pay check to pay him back. What a combination of people we had working there. I mean the staff was from every were. I made friends with a young woman whose family had original come from India. She allowed me to move into her apartment and I left the church group and all of its internal issues. Her place a nice small one bedroom and we talked about getting a bigger apartment together.

 Then things started popping off at work. Some dude who was original from Pakistan got all indignant about my being a hostess so they switch me to waitress and he became. The host. Some male ego’s are annoying. However, since I really didn’t know anyone or they me, I figured I’d simple enjoy the beach. I would go swimming after work and at night when the beaches weren’t very crowded. Then I decided I needed a new job. I looked around and found this place run by a really cool older guy. He’d service breakfasts to senior citizens for 99 cents. The pay was $2.01 an hour. Got a room in a hotel nearby because my friend from Denny’s boyfriend had returned so all those plans flew out the window. As you can image money was starting to get tight and I was having s hard time paying by rental fee for the room. Then the hotel manger did a really nice thing and said I could work off my rent by doing maid work. So, two jobs a roof over my head and I was beginning to focus on all the stuff that had pissed me off in the first place.

 Moi in Miami Beach after three months. Two jobs, just enough money to survive but oh so worth it, I don’t have to hear about alleged drama in my life, my child’s life, my father’s child’s life, who’s screwing who in church dram life, what friend of mine from what country is freaking out, whose baby making with who, who’s working for who, who committed what crime, what industry is expanding were, and who the “F” I should marry and have babies with. Instead, I am meeting people, learning different cultures, different languages, and be aloud to just be.

 All good thing must come to an end so I make a few calls and arrange to return back to were everyone swears they know me. Have always known me and know everything about me. Damn it’s not like I had to go public to the local community center with my French birth certificate and let everyone know I wasn’t not born in American. It’s not like they figured out that I really didn’t give flying crap about their whole English-speaking world. It also means that when I get back me and my child are going to tell all of them to fall of the edge of their little pea brain worlds.

 After all I had been reminded that I do not have to be a conformist and neither does my child. Or that I had chill with so called friend that I would prefer be strangers, and that when it comes to strangers I, myself had allowed me to become a stranger to my true self for years. My ride arrives and in a few days I’m back in the city I had been raising my child in. Super cool dude lets me crash at the red cross homeless shelter. The next day I go find an apartment pick up my kid and restart my life. Not someone else’s version of it by my version of it.

  While I was gone my friend had called my parents. She actually couldn’t handle taking care of my child, or so she said. Once I returned, I found all this out when I called them. That was the finial straw to any thoughts I might have had about returning to my former life style. In the mean time my mother who had gotten divorced from my father asked if I would mind if she moved up to were I lived. And so I left a place were everyone knew me, went to a place no one knew, found the self in me I had lost, and came back to write a whole new chapter in my life, my child’s life and help my mother do the same thing by helping move to a place were the only person she knew was me and her granddaughter.