"If I knew I'd be able to make a living elsewhere, I'd have left by now"
My best friend's text doesn't surprise me; most of us have thought similarly. She and I go back-and-forth detailing our emergency exit plans, and it doesn't go unnoticed that we're both using "when" rather than "if" the shit hits the fan.
The irony is not lost on me, of course. US citizens seeking refuge elsewhere while on our own shores refugees are being herded like cattle into definitely-not-concentration-camp prisons. But many of us have children. We have family who are in danger. Who wouldn't do anything, go anywhere to protect those whom they love?
I have toyed with the idea of Brazil, where I feel drawn most to, but the idea of tossing my preteen daughter into an entirely new language and culture fills me with parental dread. I've considered the UK: No foreign language, and an easier cultural transition. But it would still mean tearing a child away from everything they've ever known. She would probably be okay. But... Is probably enough to gamble on?
These exit strategies are increasingly not viewed with eye-rolls and accusations of alarmism. They are sort of just a part of life, now. We have in the backs of our minds a list of safe havens. We have people, places, opportunities. Men we're willing to marry for citizenship. Like knowing where the exit rows are in a plane cabin, we keep these back-up plans just out of mind. Our mental "In case of emergency, break glass".
As the situation rapidly becomes more emergent, my own plans have shifted from feeling like a comforting safety net to feeling like something I need to actually prepare for. The feeling isn't pleasant. I have no love for what this country is doing, has done, will go on to do. But the land itself is my home.
As a thought exercise I frequently imagine my life in another country. I pretty it up with imagining an easier cost of living, a slower pace. A generally more livable life where I'm not working two full-time jobs just to barely scrape by. I imagine my daughter having the opportunity to do what she wants to do, and to not have to slog to make it work. I imagine her having unquestioned bodily autonomy under a government that does not believe she should be a second-class citizen.
Yet still, the scenario makes my heart ache. Because with it I imagine the distance between myself and the pacific ocean. I imagine the reality of not being able to road trip to my favorite forests and deserts. I think of Arches, of the Colorado River. I think of the ice blue water in Tahoe. I think of the Sierras and the hot springs and the reefs on the Maui coast; the curtains of Spanish moss hanging from low trees in the buzzing Georgia summer. The giant redwoods and breathtaking cliffs of Big Sur.
I remember a mountain goat picking along an impossibly steep rock high above me in Anza Borrego, just a tiny white shape on the cliffside. And a sea turtle's calm eyes as I swim along side it. Dolphins, nearly within arm's reach, tumbling through the waves while I paddle along its crest. Two eagles wheeling above a foliage-choked river in the PNW. Waterfalls and geological formations. Obsidian domes and lava tubes. I imagine living elsewhere and instead I remember vividly how it felt to crest the final rise driving into Zion; How I laughed and cried all at once. I think of warm summer days where the sage-and-sand scents of my home drift to me on the wind. I think of all the beautiful places that have played background to my favorite memories and I wonder: Do I love this place still?
When you leave your home, you leave a part of yourself behind. But I've spent a lifetime leaving parts of me in various places around this country. Places I've loved, places I've lived. I feel connections to all of these places and to rip myself out by the roots is a terrifying prospect as much as it is lately also an appealing one. Would I feel relief? Or would watching my country - my home - deteriorate from a TV thousands of miles away be the cruelest type of homesickness?
So as I research, and plan, and feel my exit plan solidifying into something concrete, I feel an underlying sadness that it has really come to this. People abandoning ship in droves, or making emergency plans to, when we have such a beautiful home here that we could have made truly great.
It's a privileged take, I know. And maybe this is how it has to be. Maybe it will take a collapse for the land to be returned to its stewards and rightful residents. I know logically that other than my Hawaiian ancestors, my family doesn't truly belong here. Yet it has been our home, and it is all most of us have known. And the closer we are pushed to that neon-red exit sign, the worse I feel.
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