I can't - wait - I can't!

Reggie Peterson, I will NOT be pressured into making a decision!

I need to think about this.

Talk to Jamie, maybe?

Or... just... talk to myself, maybe?

Talk to Clover County?

I know it sounds crazy... it does sound crazy... but I want to sit down - with Clover County, as if she were a person - and just ask her: Are you my home? Who are you and who am I?

I have a hole in my heart and I think it's you.

I don't want to live here forever, but I'm FROM HERE -- and I don't know if I can leave until I know what that means. I don't want to deny it or pretend it isn't true...

All these complicated stories -- stitching together wings out of African textiles, bones out of college degrees, as if this skeleton of a person could actually fly -- decorating myself with visions of stomping feet and drumming hands... when I say, "I'm international." Oooh... it isn't true, but I have to admit -- it feels really good!

But when I say, "I'm from Georgia," well... it IS true. But it feels... like microphone feedback? Like tobacco spit and beer backwash and BO? Like my skull is splitting apart?

No one understands.

Alone. Abandoned.

I might as well say, "I'm from nowhere."

I'm from a big, dark hole of nothingness. This void inside me is BIG.

But the problem, I think... is that going to Ghana won't make any of this better. At all.

So what should I do?