It hurts me when I look at pictures of the reservation.

Pictures of my time there, and visits back, my one and only visit back, bring me a lot of real physical pain. I feel I wasn't there long enough to establish the connection from myself outward to the community and the children that I wanted to forge, even though the experience of living there and all that came with it has taken up residence in my heart and will never leave. I feel that I used the reservation for my own purposes, that the people there saw me for what I inevitably was: a tourist with time to kill. But in my deepest parts I know that my time there was immeasurably more than that - I simply have no way to assert it. Were I to go back to visit now there would few who would remember me - I was too shy and too confused to know how to become a part of them all, while they became a part of me forever.
A one-sided love affair. I hope someday I can change that and go back. God I need a sweat.