Leaving My Guilt in America

You'll have to excuse the fact that this post doesn't have much to do with Korea, other than perhaps a bit of relief, anxiety and guilt about how I feel about leaving America.

In light of recent events I just felt I needed a space to make sense of my thoughts, if you will, clear my head.

The second I open a paper these days, check out BBC or log onto any form of social media- I can expect to see a tragedy, something sad, something that moves me and often I try not to let these things affect me.I am very sensitive, passionate and dare I say, hyper affected by the things I read and see, particularly human suffering. It is both a blessing and curse.

The shooting in Colorado gave me that feeling I am becoming all too familiar with: my chest became tight, my head under water- a bit dazed and dizzy like you feel after sitting out in the sun all day or  holding your breath a few seconds longer than you should.I succumb to a sense of juvenile helplessness and a need to be told that everything is safe and fine. I immediately am taken back to gym class in 2001, September 11th. I just wanted to pick teams and play dodgeball, not watch the world change overnight. Except this time, instead of impatiently waiting for dodgeball to begin- I am celebrating a new career path, a big move to a foreign county and the prospect of making my travel writing a life long reality. I don't know how to feel. I am leaving America in less than 3 weeks, again. Why do I keep leaving if I love it so much? And I wonder why I feel so guilty. I don't think the guilt is mine. It's shared or maybe just misguided. I dont know what we are or where I fit anymore. We have become a gun culture. More than that we have accepted this violence as normalcy, this non-caring as the standard. We have also become a country that both bullies and fears and frankly I am terrified. It scares the shit out of me.

I hate to admit that sometimes I am afraid to live in my own country, sometimes my shadow casts me off. I find myself looking over my shoulder much more here, taking too familiar routes and settling in, in a way that makes me feel stuck and stagnant. It is this same familiarity that I love. It is the predictability, but it is also the people. We have an undeniable need to know why, to ask questions, but we also have a stubborn sense of pride that says we need to place the blame before we fix the problem. Maybe we are so far gone that there are no solutions. We come together as a people time and time again, when encountered with tragedy. We grieve, we feel and we understand each other on a level that we have never taken the time to understand one another on before. We forget the ideas that tell us our warmth and compassion betray us, and momentarily we are the same. I get a brief glimpse of the brilliance of the people, but also the pride I hope to feel again.I love this. And I really do love America. I love America, not for what it is, but for what I know it could be. I just hope that someday I will find myself back here and be able to sincerely call it home. I desperately want that.