Divorcing the USA

Leaving the Divided States of America with my green card in my hand feels like the final chapter of a long, beautiful, yet painful marriage.

But unlike both of my divorces, I am not leaving empty-handed. I leave fulfilled by a mosaic of lives that have touched mine: a doctorate in education from the university of Illinois, trained in mentoring incarcerated women in a Vermont prison, taught refugees the intricacies of a civil service test at the Canadian-US border, and immersed myself in a vibrant community of New York artists who taught me the language of charcoal, oils, and watercolors. I have edited and published the voice of a First Nations poet. What an honour. I marched for justice at “No Kings" rallies on the streets of New York. These are the extraordinary, unforgettable anchors of an Aussie who has been fully immersed in a beautiful American life.

But, as with any break up, the realization that a relationship is over arrives long before you release the news publicly or even before you admit it to each other. Over the last year, I have sensed this drawn-out, heavy awkwardness - the kind that comes from staying a little longer in a marriage than one should. I was trying to savor the goodness of this relationship through the wild Adirondacks where the waters flow icy and crystal-clear. To be an oil painter in Upstate New York is to engage in a constant, losing battle with the light. I’ve tried to pin down these stark landscapes - the bruising purples of a winter dusk and the aggressive, cadmium red of a single cardinal flashing against a slate-grey sky. Leaving this blizzardy upstate world feels like scraping a palette clean before the masterpiece is finished - a necessary, albeit violent, act of preservation for an artist who can no longer find the right light to paint by and just gives up.

I feel a premature survivor’s guilt. I feel the shame of not standing up to fight alongside my American friends, and the terrifying realization of what happens to those who stay because they have no choice. I still keep hearing the stories of mums being taken from their children; I have watched American citizens be executed in the streets in front of other citizens who are trying to protect their neighbors from masked bandits. I retreat into my fleeting scenic memories of this relationship. Lately, I find myself deeply mourning the boundless American panoramas before I have even left them. This is that "anticipatory grief": the knowledge that once I return to Brisbane, life will never be the same. Not bad not better just not the same. I grieve for the proud, wide beautiful bridges stretching over winding rivers built by immigrants. The quiet tasteful careful reverence shown to the great American national parks, yet this respect feels at odds with the reality that some memorials to the depravity of slavery are being taken down. Lest we forget.

There is a strange, heavy irony in the timing of my departure. I leave with a doctorate in education policy, organization and leadership. This is a credential designed to signify a mastery of how societies are supposed to learn and grow. Yet, as a researcher of human error and cognitive offloading, I have spent years tracking how we outsource our memory and decision- making to the digital ether, only to find a similar erosion in the American civic body.

I have been watching this collective offloading of responsibility to government systems that no longer serve the human pulse.

However, the personal breaking point for me to decide to break up with America was not about public policy, but a moment of surreal private dismay. I was detained and questioned numerous times in this administration while crossing borders to Canada and to the Caribbean. But there came a time when, I saw my aging sixty-year- old passport photo flash up on a large screen alongside wanted international criminals with facial tattoos. I tried to laugh it off as part of the "package" of modern travel, but the memory turned sharp and permanent when I heard my American husband's voice break. It was just an ever so slight tremor as he calmly answered inane, repetitive questions about my green card, my permanent residency and my movements.

In that one break in his voice - his usually light- hearted, steady presence faltered and I saw his hand shake. He was humiliated and deeply upset. Nobody noticed. But I did. It was at this point the condition stopped being an academic geo- political debate about "standing and fighting for your country”. It became an intensely personal realization that it was time to formally submit my separation papers with America. Everybody knows that pivot point in a relationship.

At JFK I people watch as they navigate long lines and tired unpaid TSA workers. I feel as though I am watching an empire quietly crumble. My research tells me that when we automate our memory, we lose our grip on the truth; my eyes tell me that this backdrop is haunted by what it refuses to integrate. In this final division of assets, I am reclaiming my intellectual property and my peace. I am taking my angry Australian street cat, my sad American husband, my oil paintings and my expertise back to Brisbane, leaving behind a superpower that has forgotten how to learn from its own founding-father ghosts.

This relationship with America gifted me my doctorate. This is a document of permanence from a place that feels increasingly evanescent but it is the only settlement I require.

As I sign the divorce papers, I leave the liabilities of cognitive failure and systemic erosion to the divided states of America that I no longer recognize. I depart not with a sense of victory or freedom, but with a great sadness and that clenching distrust and suspicion of an ex that often comes with a split.

Although if I dig deep, another part of me thinks that the good people left here will fight the good fight and remedy these human errors and violations that are far-reaching and ongoing. I hope so and deep down I know so.

I took this picture of a coyote on the road in Yosemite CA on one of my first visits to the states 15 years ago. The expression on his face feels like the USA to me now. Hurt, lost, haunted yet strong and enduring.