the state of the free

so tomorrow morning, way too fucking early, we leave for colorado. i've never been and i hear it's beautiful, but i don't care. i stressing the fuck out about this for weeks.
we going to stay with grims' uncle-and-his-family, and visit his grandparents. they getting older so this may be the last chance, and after 3-and-change years of marriage, they've never met me.
i'm bad with people. and especially bad with family because i never like being made to feel like i'm required to love somebody (yes, i have problems with authority, and i'm happy with them). you'd think it being his family might make that eaiser, but it doesn't because with my family i have no problem saying fuck you or fuck off altogther, but with his family, i want to at least be polite. they're nice people.
and while we're there, it'll be my mom's birthday and the 4th anniversary of us getting together (not getting married) both on the 8th of july, which, it turns out, is also his grandmother's birthday. so rather than calling my mom and then focussing entirely on commemorating our first night together, we'll be having dinner with the grands. which i think will be lovely, except for that thing i stressing about for weeks.
grims' grandfather is a racist.
i've been warned about him, but i don't know if he's been warned about me, or if the latter'd make a difference anyway.
in case anybody reading doesn't know, grims is a white boy from vermont and i'm a little dreadlocked black girl from trinidad+tobago. so, not only am i black, i could be considered to "talk funny", and could also be considered one of "them immigrants come here to take our jobs" (although anybody who's met me knows i can't wait to get the fuck outta this country)- not that i think all americans are so narrow-minded as to assume those negative stereotypes about me, but, like i said, i've been informed that he's a racist, and negative stereotypes are the engine of racism, right?
now, i'm not particularly worried about what his reaction to me will be- it's my nature to assume the worst. what i'm worried about is what i'll do to him if he manages to push the right(wrong?) buttons. i've been scared for weeks now that he'll manage to say one of the few things i find offensive (i'm almost never offended. literally. it's happened maybe twice in my life, and i say twice just in case there's one instance i forgot) and i'll lose my shit and fuck him up.
he's 80-something years old.
i can't be the wife who met the grandfather and killed him (or even just caused him to have a heart attack and drop dead on his own) at the dinner table, on the grandmother's 80-something-th birthday.
so i haven't been able to get excited about this trip.
we gone from tomorrow until next tuesday. wish me luck.

if i make it back alive and unwanted by the law, we get to go to tobago in august for a 3day jazz festival featuring stevie wonder, who i been waiting my whole life to see live. so that, and grims having a good visit with his family, are my hopeful reminders to myself to not kill anybody, no matter what happens.
i hope grims' grandfather's gun collection is safely locked away when i get there.

walk good.
ps: this most likely means no fiction for a week. but i'll post if i can.