The Place In Which We Belong

I know that this is the hardest part. The part where you connect everything and shape the edges just the way you want them to be. This, my friends is most definitely the hardest part.
It is Friday November 20th and I have 41 days left, including this day. Today I am battling through another round of words written long ago that may or may not be a part of Lives Lived. Rounding out Ian McAllister has truly become the toughest job yet. Perhaps that is because I have known Ian McAllister in a number of forms and he still lives on the fringes of my life.
Over the past week or so I have been rounding out the McAllister family. It is tough because initially I hated them all. I was bitter and angry with Kelly for being who she was and Ian for his betrayals. Now, as I look at Lives Lived through a more complete gaze I realize that people typically don’t chose whom they are. Unfortunately most people are an abstraction of something that someone else gave them. It is so difficult to wake up in the morning and say, “Hey. I am going to be this type of person even if this type of person is rare and different than most of the population”. Most people struggle to meet standards set out by others or they try to be the person they think they should be.
The McAllister’s are a lower middle class white family in Michigan. The racism of the region lies beneath their skin. They aren’t educated or free or whatever enough to break out of it. Gabrielle’s family is an upper middle class black family and with the exception of herself they are not able to break out of the racism the their community is built upon. Even though they are educated and different than many of the other black people in Detroit they cannot completely escape what they have been taught.
It takes an outsider, someone who is not accepted and a bit feared to rise above the hypocrisy of “normalcy”. It takes a person who is not thought to be sane to say the thing that does not fall in line with centuries of stereotypes. Gabrielle is different so she is allowed to slip through the cracks and find her own way. She is lucky. Everyone thinks she is crazy so she is able to break free of the standard.
Today I will round out the McAllister’s. I will string together the pieces of their lives without the guise of hate. I will love them the way that all people deserve to be loved. Even the ones that do not have the strength to break free from what they have been taught. The past and the present that creates Ian McAllister and prevent him living his life completely will be in one place and in need of nothing more than polishing. Shall we begin? I think we shall.