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July 2008
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By globalistgirl, on July 3rd, 2008

Happy Independence Day – To My Own Freedom

This seems to be the time to have deep things to say about celebrating the 4th of July, whether it’s about American hypocracy in some way or other or tear-jerking statements about freedom and liberty. What I have to say is neither.

Conversations with non-Americans have made me think about this country for a while now. While I certainly have my TCK moments, out of the countries that I’m connected to, there is nowhere I’d rather be.  Compared to being ostracized in Sweden, too open and continental in Finland, or forever Other in China, I can very reasonably claim to belong here and others accept me as one of ‘theirs’. And by now, not only is my life here, I have a history here.

I have old college friends. I have a Social Security card that’s getting worn around the edges. I have memories of driving to Chicago, to Minneapolis-St. Paul, to Maryland, to Florida. Of the Atlantic City beaches as a child, Captiva Island beaches as a teen, and Wrightsville Beach as an adult. I have a lease, a car, furniture. All my files are on letter-size paper (as opposed to A4). I give times in AM and PM. Now that my parents re-expatriated to the States, even my family is here.

When I was in the midst of living in Sweden knowing that my pain, loneliness and depression were because of repatriation and seeking out non-Swedes obsessively on the Internet (back then it was all IRC), someone told me that I shouldn’t forget we’re all under the same sky. I looked out the window and cried, wishing fervently that I was under another spot of the same sky.

Now I can look up and I am. I pulled off The Great Escape. I have nothing left in Sweden that can pull me back there. The last time I saw the Atlantic, I saw it from Coney Island, walking in the sand, eating a corn dog, with an old friend I’ve known since freshman year in college. He moved to New York and I was visiting. And I buried my feet in the sand, smelled the sea, and looked out toward the horizon, knowing I was literally an ocean away from my personal vision of hell. Buried in my own history over here. Brought there by life already lived here, that keeps me here, safe, in the best place to be a TCK I’ve ever experienced.

I have never held anything but an American driver’s license. Happy 4th of July.

July 3rd, 2008 | Tags: , | Category: Insider, US | 1924 comments

1,924 comments to Happy Independence Day – To My Own Freedom

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