Another try...

The color part of this image is a recent photo; the black and white part is old and long since gone.

I'm almost liking this opening...

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Shit.

April Fools, 1981.

Perfect.

It fits with my life beginning on Groundhog Day...that is, going by the American tradition of it. That it happened twenty-five years ago means nothing; I am forever stained by that idiocy, thanks to my Aunt Mari. Saw his shadow as he was being born so ran back into his hole, and didn't come out till half-seven; that's why he loves the night. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that was the main reason people agreed with my mother that I was simple of brain. 

Perhaps I am. For what am I doing, now? Proving them right by choosing to fly home on the First of April. The fates must be holding their sides, from laughter. 

I'd planned to go through Dublin. It would have been so much simpler. So much more direct. I could hop a train at Connolly Station up through Belfast to arrive in Derry on the Waterside. And had I chosen to fly a month earlier, there probably would have been no difficulty. 

But the hunger strikes were on in the North of Ireland, and there were daily protests collapsing into riots a-plenty. So wait a little. See if it calms down enough to hop a train.

Which it was beginning to do.

That's when I headed to the American Express in the Galleria to get my ticket, and what did I find out? Fucking Eurovision is being hosted in Dublin, the first week of April, and apparently the city has lost its goddamned mind. Flight costs were insane. Hotels impossible to come by. Trains packed. Busses, too. Even hopping a ferry from Holyhead would be ridiculous. So if I wanted to be there before my mother was dead and buried, it was through Gatwick and Glasgow to Derry, I had to go.

And hope my bag would follow. There were many stories being shared about Gatwick, according to the ladies at the travel office, while nothing was known about Glasgow. I was warned to bring extra clothes and put my valuables in a backpack to carry on the plane.

So very inspiring.

But I suppose it's the perfect way to return to a home I could no longer call home. To see a mother, brothers and sister, who were no longer my mother, brothers and sister in an area of the world I was from, but wasn't. That I'd been born Brendan Kinsella meant nothing, for that was no longer me. That my place of birth had been Derry was no longer true. To all who knew me in that town, I was thought dead, though I am not.

How can one even think to make sense from such a situation?

I've lived in Houston, Texas for more than eight years, though I haven't, and tried to rebuild a life that wasn't mine. It really belonged to some lad named Brennan McGabbhinn, of Letterkenny in the Republic, who'd died as an infant. 

Except he'd been resurrected, because my immigration papers were in that name. And the American government was satisfied that was my name. Those I'd met in this city all called me by that name, as did my cousins. In fact, the only proof I now have that I am not the person who that name says I am is my memory, which is really not to be trusted. 

I can understand the willingness to accept me as someone I am not. It's simple. Easy. Uncomplicated. That's what it said on your visa. That's what it says on your passport. That's what it says on your Green Card. If those papers all agree, why cause trouble when none is at hand? And why believe a lad who might claim otherwise? Especially since he's simple and damaged. 

Now I have received indication that the British are not yet certain I am who I am not, despite there being no evidence to the contrary. I think that is due only to their own bureaucratic stubbornness. Somewhere, somehow they decided they need to speak with this Brendan Kinsella, alive or dead, about a bombing he was caught in, and naught can change their vague focus on that. 

So I can think of no way to reconcile all of this madness except to accept it as it is and do as I always have--as I pleased. Which has led me to both great difficulty and amazing joy. And sorrow. 

If the truth be told, I do not want to return to Derry. It's a city of ghosts, to me. Some of whom I had known. But familial duty has its demands, and despite what people have said against the once-was-me, I honor my duties. So here I am, in my room, packing for the journey to leave a city I had never existed in, though I had.