Unbelonging

I was never a proud American. There were too many problems I saw around me for that. There were aspects of living in the US that I appreciated; the beautiful landscapes, the fact that you could go to a different state and feel like you were in a different country, the interesting and complex diversity of people. But as long as I could remember I felt like an outsider. Some of that I understand now was ADD but that didn't account for so many other things I cared about and didn't see reflected in the values of most of the people around me. In middle school my projects and presentations were about how inconvenient women were tried and burned as witches and cosmetic testing on rabbits while my classmates studied mould on bread. At 12 I went vegetarian and by 13 I had become outspoken on any number of things that infuriated or bewildered me such as homophobia and oil spills.

Like everyone else though, I wanted to belong. Not badly enough to try to fit in; my Docs would never be swapped out for Keds, but I needed community like we all do. By high school I had started to find my people in the theater community. And the friends I had then were the closest I have every gotten to anyone that wasn't a partner. As time went on though and I was pushed out of the relative safety of smaller school systems and programs, I found myself feeling alone again. My college was enormous and I didn't know anyone in the city I had relocated to for it. I didn't drink, didn't party and preferred reading and listening to music in my little apartment over much else.

I'm an outgoing introvert. That means that I like talking to people but it drains me and I need to be alone to regroup and recover after socializing. I like my quiet and my solitude. Over time I found that having a partner and eventually, deeply intimate but always professional relationships with clients met most of my needs for connection. I'd broken off a few friendships with women that I felt expected or wanted more from me than I could give. My natural inclination was to find those relationships too possessive. I struggled somehow to find myself in them. Strangely, despite my strong ideological convictions, I often had a hard time speaking up for myself or understanding and communicating my boundaries. Some of that was not wanting to hurt or offend someone, some was fear of rejection and some was simply not knowing that time what they were.

Life went on and I had marriages and children. Life got busier. It was easy to tell myself that I didn't have time for friendships. Secretly though, I think I just didn't know how to do them. I knew I didn't want lots of friends that I had little more than friendly banter with. Not that there isn't a place for that. But if I was going to put in the effort and challenge my distaste for personal vulnerability there was going to need to be more. To be clear- I am an open book as they say. There is very little I won't share about myself. But vulnerability is an entirely different thing. One that doesn't live in your head but in your body. It is not a comfortable place.

The first Trump presidency (and I cannot believe that I need to include the word "first" in this sentence) was when things really started to shift for me and for many of those around me. A heightened awareness of the need for community surfaced. Whether it was finding people that could share mutual disbelief and horror at what we were hearing on the news every day, that could reflect back a "this is not normal" expression on their faces or recognizing that we may not in fact be able to depend on systems that we previously took for granted and might therefor need each other more, it became clear that if we were going to get through this, it was going to have to be together.

Then Covid happened, is still happening. This initially gave us such a massive shock that we had no choice but to reimagine different ways of living and working. We started to recognize the value in things like making our own food or learning some basics about natural medicine or how to home educate our kids. For a moment, there was no map. It was horrible no doubt and profoundly isolating and frightening. But had we taken what it was showing us to heart, maybe we could have made the kind of sustainable changes it had become apparent were needed. We didn't. Instead of using the opportunity we all had been given, no matter how unwanted it was, we clung to vestiges of our former lives and returned to them as soon as we possibly could. I can't speak for the rest of the world but Americans have always chosen convenience. Many may not like the way things are done; our educational or medical systems for example, but we accept them as something we have little say or choice in despite having had a window open to the possibility that not only do we not have to accept them but we may in fact be healthier and happier without them.

These years for me were deeply unsettling. I was growing more and more intolerant of our country's ways of doing things and more and more aware that most people could ultimately live with it and I couldn't. I tried to hold on to the lessons of the dark times of Trump and a pandemic and to revision what my life could look like. But it was proving incredibly hard to implement any ideas I had. I know enough about systems theory to understand how resistant they are to change. And short of moving to a commune and living off the grid, any small changes I was trying to make were not going to be enough. My sense of right and wrong was being stressed constantly and I was suffocating under the weight of it. My nervous system couldn't ever seem to recover anymore because terrible things were happening every day. Mind you, my life and the lives of most of those around me didn't look much different and that is what allowed most people to keep plugging along. I'm a white woman and not likely to be a first target like many of my queer, trans, or clients of color were, no matter how much of a pain in the ass I might be. Nonetheless the lines in the sand that I drew kept getting crossed. The conversation was always "when will it be time to go?" but no one seemed to have an answer.

During this time, messaging around me about the importance of community and friendship got strong. Perhaps because of my neurodivergence, I struggle with the rules of friendship. How to find it, nurture it, maintain it. I find myself feeling easily hurt when my efforts aren't reciprocated or alienated when opinions diverge. A delightful part of ADD is rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD) which is basically a stronger than typical response of feeling judged and rejected (real or imagined) by others. So while I was hearing how much connection mattered especially during troubled times and I was putting myself out there enough to try, I didn't seem to be getting much in the way of results. Looking back now I do see that there were people whose invitations for friendship I missed at the time. I think in some ways I wasn't actually in a place to be a good friend. I also think that our culture in the US is not set up to support a more communal, harmonious and collaborative way of being. The country is proudly individualistic and capitalist driven. It's profit over people and progress (or one version of it) over presence. So if it doesn't come pretty naturally for you, you may not be able to find it. Don't blame yourself for that.

The second Trump presidency was it for me. The only country I had ever known was not one I could continue to live in. I know that all of the things that have happened over the past 10 years had a stronger impact on me than others. Another fun part of ADD is that many of us have something called justice sensitivity. Pulling from the internet, is described as "a heightened emotional and cognitive reactivity to unfairness, rules, or moral imbalances, frequently impacting those with ADHD due to emotional dysregulation, high empathy, and a "fight-or-flight" nervous system. It manifests as intense anger, rumination, or distress over unfair treatment—even when small—often leading to hyperfocus on fixing issues, or "doomscrolling" regarding global injustices." Check. I also had the double whammy of having a family of civil rights activists; my grandparents dragging my mother and her brothers at a young age to protests and marches and prolifically writing letters of dissent to any government official they could locate an address for. While struggle and oppression is a tale as old as time, this felt different. The amount of hatred, division, contempt, violence, greed and the abandonment of any pretense of morality or law was unlike anything I had ever seen. And yes, because of the internet and screens, we were seeing a lot of it.

While I could easily accept that there are some very bad people in the world what I couldn't reconcile was how many of them there are and how few were willing to stand up to them. I also could not understand how some people were able to still find joy, pleasure, happiness in the face of what was happening around them. I'm going to break this down because it is a sensitive topic and I think one that deserves more care. When I speak about "some people" I'm talking about my friends. I'm talking about people that I know and love and respect. I'm talking about good people who care about others. People who share my political views. People who try to do right. For these people I felt a collective sigh and shrug of shoulders. An exasperated "I'm just going to focus on my life/work/family and hope that things will turn around eventually." And while I love these people still and may anger some by saying this, I couldn't swallow the privilege in that. And again, it made me feel so lonely, so much like I didn't belong, that I didn't know what to do with it.

Let me be clear about something. Two of my favorite women in my life are my cousin and a dear friend. Both are single mothers to brown skinned children. One is a doctor and one is a teacher. And I do not refer to them when I speak about my disappointment. I do not refer to anyone for that matter that is part of a marginalized group. It is not their job to fight this bullshit, it is ours. As I write this I am acutely aware of the fact that I could be doing more. I could be risking more. I chose protecting myself and my child by leaving a country that felt increasingly emotionally and physically dangerous when I saw that my ability to continue fighting while in it was diminishing. I am acutely aware every day of how my own privilege allowed this to be possible and I wrestle all the time with that. As I recover here though, in a place that is far more aligned with my beliefs and way of living, my intention is do more and I feel it is my duty to do so.

I'm not sure that I will ever feel like I truly belong in this world. I know that I didn't in the US. Strangely in Australia I almost immediately felt more accepted, more cared for, more on the same page with pretty much everyone I met. I felt an ease and openness to people, a trust, a kindness that made it clear I would not have trouble finding friends. I'll write more later when I'm sure that I'm not seeing things through rose colored glasses about why that is but I'm pretty sure it's going to stick. It's baked into life here and all but the most ornery of Aussies seem to value conversation and community.

I still have hope that things will turn around in the US. I think they have to. I wish the US could be a little more humble and recognize that maybe the way things are done there doesn't actually make the country great and it certainly doesn't make it better than others. You don't have to do a lot of traveling to see that but you do probably need to do some. If you can't, read about it. Listen to the stories of people from around the world. Nothing increases empathy and reminds you of your humanity like reading and that includes fiction. Do whatever you need to do to survive this so that when it's over and we start to rebuild you will be prepared to thrive. If that means staying there and fighting, I applaud you. If it means leaving, you have my unconditional support. If it means laying low because that's how you will endure, I understand. Just save a portion of whatever you collect for others for whom this fight is higher stakes.

The root of anger for me is love. I desperately want everyone to know and feel love. And I get really pissed off when some people try to take it away from others. I am so, so angry right now at the people running the US. They are not my people. I may not have found all of my people yet there or here but I know they are out there. And I think I'm now better equipped to find them.