Starting yesterday's weekly edition of Across the Pond has really got me thinking about my life and how to everyone around me I am just the absolute oddest person they know. 99% of the people here would sell their first born and cut off their right arm to get a visa to USA, and I have a passport that I keep under lock and key. Safely hidden away just in case anyone gets a notion to come in and try to steal it because here an American passport is your ticket to freedom. It's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
I didn't leave America because I hated its policies or because the president was democrat or republican. I left because I was missing something inside of me. There was an emptiness in me that I couldn't fill. I tried so hard to find it there. I lived in numerous states from east coast to west coast and north to south, but for all of my searching I just couldn't find "it".
What "it" was I had no idea. However, I was determined to find it, and thankfully I did. Only it wasn't in my backyard. It was on the other side of the globe in a place I never thought I would be.
Normally whenever anyone from here marries an American, they immediately file for a visa and head off to the States. Before I got married, I made it very clear to my husband that I had absolutely no intentions of doing that. He had no interest in a greencard and just wanted to marry me because I was me and not because my passport had USA stamped on it.
While my husband's immediate family have accepted I will never whisk their son away and take him to America, it's hard for the distant relatives to comprehend. Whenever they visit which is only once or twice a year, they always ask when we are going back to America. I just pretend to not understand what they said. I have learned it's easier that way because no amount of explanation will ever make them get "it", and they are only here for a few hours a year so it really isn't worth the argument either.
Every person's happiness is different, and that's ok. That's what makes this world a special place to live in. I love learning about other people's lives and cultures. I mean can you imagine if everyone was like Uncle Bubba? Shudder. What a weird world it would be.
While a part of me gets ticked off at being asked again for 1000th time when I am going back, another part of me smiles because I am different. Different is good. I think I will keep being different because if I were the same as the people I went to school with, then instead of sitting in an exotic land, I would be at home in a trailer park, knocked up, with 5 screaming kids in the background all with different daddies, wondering how I would get my next "fix" and if I can buy beer with my food stamps. I think I like exotic better.
