Photo by Psovart
I’ve left my home country.
I went through a grieving period where I had to finally face my expatriation as a citizen, as a member of the collective that is America.
The mourning lasted about a half an hour.
But still, it was tough, to face those realities that I have left my home, indefinitely. The culture, the nation, the land that nourished me, that gave birth to me, I’m leaving it because the opportunity is better elsewhere.
It’s funny, that’s why so many of my American ancestors came to the United States in the first place; they were leaving the risks at home for the unknown risks (and fabled opportunities) across the sea. Being a descendent of that conquest into the unknown is irreplacable; I have the distinctly American tendencies of wander and adventure. I find these tendencies even more prevalent in those who live on the west coast, where the adventurer subset of the adventurous Americans traveled off to.
And then I hit the edge of the frontier, at the Pacific ocean, and I got caught in the moss for a while. I tried for ten years to succeed in America, and it just wasn’t happening. I had serious fears for the future of the country; after a decade of being pillaged by obscenely rich and inhuman corporations, the country, the economy, and the society are not feeling safe to this sailor of that lifelong ship.
It’s too risky to stay, and the opportunity is better elsewhere.
As a people, Americans are descended from those who made this very same leap into the unknown. It’s how our forbears got there in the first place.
Leaving America was, quintessentially, the most American thing I could do.
