I’m leaving the country, why do you care?

Have you ever noticed that people get insulted when you don’t like something they care about? It’s really irrational. Why should it matter that I don’t like what you like? You enjoy it, isn’t that enough? But no, they feel that since they like it, it must be right, and you’re wrong by not liking it. It gets even worse when you dislike a religion or country, or something that they take as a personal identifier. If you dislike something like that they see it as a personal attack.

I have decided that I want to leave the United States. My reasons are my own and I don’t need to explain them to you, but regardless, I want to leave. I’m also thinking about giving up my US citizenship. Does that piss you off? Why? Why should it?

Is it because of the cognitive dissonance? If you’ve been telling yourself, and hearing from others, that everyone loves it here, that everyone is dying to get in here, that this is the greatest place on earth, then yeah, I could see how somebody hating it and wanting to leave would make your brain hurt. People say “Love it or leave it”, well guess what, I’m leaving it! I think it’s funny how this takes them aback for a second. “Wh….what? You’re leaving?” Next comes sour grapes where the offended person tries to use ad hominem attacks. “How dare you leave! How ungrateful of you! How selfish! How un-American (like that’s a bad thing?)” So am I trapped in my own country? What’s the value of citizenship if I don’t have the freedom to leave?

It’s hard to be true to yourself

The past few months have been a major life changer for me. I graduate college, move to another state, and lose my girlfriend of almost three years. On top of that, right before I graduate I realize that I no longer love the subject I was studying as passionately as I once did. Everything I’ve worked for and built, everything that I thought I could count on, shattered. So I’ve been rebuilding.

I guess you could call me a late bloomer, but I never really figured out who I was until recently. I know most people work that out in the angsty highschool years, or at least have a good idea by their sophomore year in college, but not me. Trying to figure out who I am took all the way up until I graduated college.

The hardest thing about being true to yourself is other people. I’ve lost a lot of friends in my quest to figure out who I am. There are times when I feel horribly and utterly alone. Other people, whether consciously or subconsciously, are constantly projecting on you what they want you to be like. A good friend respects you for who you are and doesn’t seek to change you. Needless to say, they’re hard to find.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m finding not many people like me for who I am. If they’ve known me for a while, they’re usually surprised. All throughout growing up I was a doormat. People could push me over, walk on me, I never stood up for myself. I was always quick to try and please. When I met people I would try and be like a chameleon, I would change to suit the environment. If that meant hiding or lying about parts of myself to fit in, so be it.

I don’t do that anymore.

I know who I am now, and I won’t bend. I just wish more people liked me, that my views and core beliefs were not so unpopular, that people could appreciate me. I wish I had friends.

Sometimes you just have to do what you know to be right, even when everyone else around you thinks you’re wrong. I know that’s cliche, but it’s cliche for a reason. At the end of the day you can escape other people, but you always have to live with yourself.