To watch your home change in front of you is surprising. But at the same time, going someplace like Mississippi, makes me appreciate even this.

Where I grew up, it was all people who were black and Latino, people who look like me. Now I live in a neighborhood where very, very few people look like me.

We live inside our parents' backstory.

You're a part of me...You're in my heart. Forever and always, all right? —D

One place exists as their interpretation of it. For the people living and thriving inside of it, it's another place.

Don't trust women, my mother said to me. Even the ugly ones will take what you thought was yours.

Lately, I'd been feeling like I was standing outside watching everything and everybody. Wishing I could take the part of me that was over there and the part of me that was over here and push them together—make myself into one whole person like everybody else.