me, unplugged

today’s promptuesday:

This week, tell us who you are, what’s inside, where you’re from. Share your memory fragments, those visions in your head, those figments that make you, you. What bits and pieces formed your whole? Are you whole? Tell us.

The original meme asked for the basic “I am from” format below, so let’s keep it like that. And if you know the person who created this meme in the first place, tell them thanks for me. I think it’s powerful.

i am from being both whole and broken.

i am from 3 continents and 4 countries.

i am from singing to prince’s “7″ in my bedroom as a freshman in high school.

i am from a normal family.

i am from a not-so-normal family.

i am from viewing the world through many lenses.

i am from grandma’s delicious wedding cakes and thanksgiving day crescent rolls.

i am from slumber parties at my cousins’ old house on whitmer road.

i am from the family’s famous coleslaw made in our very own basement for the annual church festival.

i am from family snowball fights, furniture forts, roller-skating in basements and teaching my sister how to read.

i am from building tiny communities with family friends, using monopoly money as currency, starting our own mini-businesses.

i am from rolling up my jeans and catching crawdads in the creek in front of our house.

i am from putting on my raincoat and boots and splashing around in puddles.

i am from riding bikes all the way down the hill from the back of the property to the front, and back up and down again.

i am from stray cats, stray dogs, injured birds, snakes on trees, crickets, cicadas, salamanders and dead spiders. (especially that last one.)

i am from family harrassment; people hacking into our phone system while we were away, and changing our answering machine message to make our family sound like backwoods satan-worshippers, animal sacrifices and all.

i am from my family being ignored; our entire family not being listed in a program for a musical in which we were all involved.

i am from religious dispute; catholic roots and non-denominational leanings, being ostracized by extended family after changing churches.

i am from becoming a black sheep and not agreeing with my family about most things, usually political and social issues.

i am from loving to start projects and never having the discipline or motivation to finish them.

i am from love, anger, comfort, bitterness, happiness, passive-aggression, harmony, depression, determination, pain and joy.