Thursday is election day. Which means that this year was an election year. Which means that no real long-term decisions were made this year. Everything was about single issues and sexy cases, one-liners and lots and lots of hot air.
The vileness of it all makes me almost sick to my stomach. I wouldn’t buy a used car from any of the candidates!
Even the ones I agree with are total idiots!
Actually, I don’t follow politics and I NEVER discuss it.
My point was really this: Being so sick of living in country where the entire political reality makes me gag, I am flirting with the thought of moving to a different country. Immigrating.
I have live abroad before and it has some quite heavenly benefits. Since you’re not living there, you get to look at your native country with rose-tinted glasses. There is a wonderful romanticfication that happens in me, when I live abroad. I treasure the memory of it and remember only the good parts.
And if the political situation in your guest country is disgusting, you are wonderfully emotionally detached from it: They be as crazy as they want – I’m just a visitor.
The very obvious parallel to this situation is Christmas.
We alternate between spending Christmas with “my” family and “his” family. When we spend Christmas with my family, I am filled with the most lonely feeling! These are my peeps! They’re supposed to “get” me and although I don’t know how it happens, they (EVERY TIME) put me in this role of being 8 years old. The fact that I hold an M.A., have given birth to two children and am a married 36 year old with a house, a cat and a car is totally besides the point. To them, I’m 8. And I hence become an 8-year old. I cannot escape.
I much prefer spending Christmas with my in-laws.
They’re CRAZY people with strrrrrange traditions and wieeeeerd emotional responses and the occasional complete melt-down – and it’s all fine with me. I watch my sister in-law turn 8 in front of my eyes and then I watch in amazement as also my mother in law turns into an 8-year old. Ahh, the things mothers and daughters do to each other. But I remain an adult.
In that sense, spending Christmas with “his” family is like living in exile in an exotic country where the food and language is different but also the political climate and to a certain degree the core values too. ( His mother irons used gift wrapping paper. I once saw my mother throw out a dress because she had bought a new dress and needed the hanger!)
Me? I’m taking to the task as an anthropologist doing exciting field work. They be as fucked-up crazy as they want, I’m having a ball.
I love them and I care deeply for them but I am emotionally detached from the drama and can hence enjoy a nice glass of wine and another piece of dark meat.
And come election night I am going to pour myself a big ole’ glass of wine and watch an episode of something from HBO while my countrymen, who were supposed to “get” me and be my peeps, steer this country straight to hell.
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I get it.
I get it so much that there’s nothing to say, just nodding.
But I do want to ask how one irons gift-wrapping paper. 😉
If you really want it, anything is possible. Even ironing gift-wrapping paper!