I decided to plan a trip a couple of weeks ago...when I so wanted to feel like I belonged...to go to a place where I belonged.

I went this past weekend to the city I was born in as well as the city my mother passed away in. I thought maybe by going to her grave...it would fill something in me. This action, on some level, I hoped, would lessen the feeling of not belonging and of wishing I had what I never had.

I also went, in part, to speak to the people who had orchestrated us living in this awful home for years. I looked for them through Social Services and was not able to find anyone. I wanted them to hear how awful it was to live in that home and how could they have sanctioned these people to care for children when they were so cruel?

The lady who was the Case Worker for us already had retired and no one knew if she was still in the area.

I could find no one and the agency itself had closed within the last few months.

Does anyone know what it is like to be looking for something in a place only to realize there is absolutely nothing there for you? The realization of that hit me when I could find no one who knew anything about our placement into that home...

The city I went to felt so dirty. There was trash strewn everywhere. On the sides of the road...in peoples yards...Ironically, here I was digging through the trash of the past, trying to make some sense out of it, trying to find myself-and there was nothing there. Absolutely nothing.

I didn't go to my mothers grave. I had been there one time before. Years ago. When I was realizing there was nothing in this city for me, I realized, too, there was nothing for me at her grave. She had not been there for me while living, what could I possibly get from her, while dead?

I thought maybe by going to the place I had come from, I could put myself back together in some way.

It may not be the answer I would have liked as far as finding nothing there. Perhaps it is the beginning of answers. I will stop looking where there is nothing.