Back to Guatemala

That’s right, I went back to the homeland. Back to Guatemala. This was a trip long overdue, and honestly, I don’t know what took me so long.

Guess what? We are taking this show on the road. Not quite overseas, but definitely out of the country.

Maybe it was because it was such a good trip that I didn’t rush for a redo? Because the last trip I took there felt fairly recent despite having taken place in 1997. And damn, that feels like a billion years ago. That was years before I got married. Before I had joined the military. And before I had kids.

I wanted to go during the marriage. To take my children and the husband (at the time) to my country. Somehow it never came together, probably because I subconsciously understood what my conscious could not comprehend: that I had married a racist misogynist narcissist who would have only made the experience hellish and used it as fuel to ridicule and minimize my roots.

For the kids

I do regret not taking my kids back to Guatemala while they were still young. But I can’t go back, I can only move forward, and I expect that after this journey, I can redress mistakes of the past, and take my children to the homeland to see where their mother came from. I claimed my roots.

I mean, what’s the ex gonna do? Take them to Michigan to see the great white land where he came from? Yeah, he already did that and they have not returned. I mean, why would they? What is there to revisit in Jackson, Michigan? You’ve seen it once, you’ve seen it all.

Years leading up to 2020

This time I was going back to Guatemala with my mother. She needed to complete some business there that she was unable to complete when she went two years ago with her sister. Apparently there was a lot of drama, and much beef upon their return. I spent most of 2019 listening to her rehash that drama.

However, she wasn’t going to ask any of her sisters to go. Because I started a new job, I almost couldn’t accompany her either. There are financial constraints with a new job that made it hard to travel that year.

The trip almost didn’t happen this year. 2020 did its best to throw wrenches into the works almost monthly. COVID, travelling bans, quarantines, cancellations and then days before our departure, massive furloughs of airline personnel.

This is lowkey a bop? pic.twitter.com/zjgTemfdEU
— Lip Gloss Queen (@Wrapfiqah_) June 29, 2020