If You Don’t Like America, Then Leave
In my previous post, I wrote that I chose to move abroad rather than start over in the job-hunt process because I was “fed-up.” And it’s true, I was absolutely worn-out from trying to rub two nickels together.
But that wasn’t all that was eating away at me. Besides the education system burying students under debt they may or not be able to crawl back out of, I was also feeling run down by
Safety.
Healthcare.
Politics.
And this post is about safety. I am scared to write this post because not only will not everyone agree with me, the majority of my family wouldn’t agree with me. But I want to say it anyway.
Since I moved abroad, I have traveled to 27 countries. I’ve had a lot of time to consider new cultures and their political systems. As a human, it is only natural to compare what is new to what we already know. So, I can’t help but use America as my point of reference in all matters. In a lot of ways, America doesn’t stack up as well as we are led to believe.
When I finally saved up enough for a plane ticket and 500$ of starter-money, I took a leap of faith and moved to Russia blind. I say blind because I didn’t know a soul there, had no idea where I was going to live, or how to speak the language. Still, after a couple of months, I was settled in with a job and an apartment.
At that point, my family back in the States started to ring me with their concerns. Mostly, concerns about my safety. They had seen latest news about Putin and were worried about how I would be treated as an American. My Nana quoted guns violence and worried about me walking around on my own.
Mind you, I had just moved to Moscow from New York City. She never once called to ask me if I carried some sort of protection in NYC. She must not have been aware that I frequently walked home from work late at night in the dark, or that I fearfully clutched Hello Kitty brass knuckles.
I could have quoted her statistics about how you’re more likely to be gunned down in the United States, or that the homicide rate is much higher in the U.S.. But, it wouldn’t have matter because her concern was based on feeling, not fact. Her perception of Russia is that is a dangerous place, and she shudders to think of me walking in the street alone there.
My feeling, which also isn’t informed by cold numbers but rather by my lived experience, is that I never felt safer than when I lived in Moscow. The metros are heavily policed. I never witnessed or heard of petty crime. Never looked over my shoulder furtively, no matter what area of the city I was in.
When I moved to Barcelona, Spain a couple years later, my family rejoiced. My Nana directly told me how relieved she was that I was moving out of Russia. She used some terminology that wouldn’t be sensitive to reprint.
The only person in my family who wasn’t happy was my Mother. Because she is the only one to have visited me in Moscow. And she was the only one to have visited me in Barcelona.
Walking along Las Ramblas, she noticed the prostitutes. She heard drug dealers calling to us. Near our apartment, an older man made kissy noises in our direction — one even touched her arm. She was shaken by the exchange. I didn’t tell her that pickpocketing and petty crime is on the rise. But I did tell her to hold on to her purse tight in the metro, because my friend had her bag stolen not long ago.
Knock on wood, I have never had anything stolen or been a victim of any crime abroad. I loved living in Barcelona and only had positive experiences there. But if you ask my Mother, my Nana, and me where the most dangerous places I’ve lived are, my Mother would say Barcelona, my Nana would say Moscow, and I would say New York City.
It scares me that there are so many guns carried around in public places in America. That there were 370 mass shootings so far in 2019 and there are only 365 days in the year. That 8 of them were in schools.
New Zealand only needed to experience one tragedy to change their gun control laws. Why do we watch this on the news daily and not think about changing who can buy what kind of gun. Does a mentally unstable person, who wouldn’t pass a mental-health examination, need to have access to automatic weapons? The kind that mow down innocent people at an office, a church, a high school graduation party?
I guess I don’t agree that the right to bear arms means that anyone can bear any kind of arms anyplace. And that’s my unpopular opinion.
I don’t need to hear arguments from Pro-Gun people, thank you. Growing up in a very conservative family, I have heard it all and yet have arrived at different conclusions.
I’m just trying to convey how fear is subjective and how the subjective feeling of safety, or lack thereof, can be influenced by stereotypes as well as lived experience.
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