The hate hurts

I left America 9 years ago.  I was a single mother, hairdresser and considered myself a normal citizen. I had a shitty car due to my own credit mishaps, but I could afford to support my child, alone, with no parents and no child support.  I put myself through college and made a career for myself through hard work. I was OK, yet I left for new adventure, and to run a bit from my past.  There were no hard feelings, or any feelings much about "America."  We adopted the first black president, and I was only witness to 1 racist remark about it.  I was not yet participating in Facebook however, and Myspace was a less communicative political platform. America had some "hope" and leaving it where I had, I felt like we were all going to be OK.

I jumped off the plane to the Land of Magic.  Kangaroos, G'day's and ocean abounded. It was a little land of bliss.  Within a day I noticed the sea of white faces.  When we moved from Minneapolis to Denver, I remember my first question to my mother was "Where are the black people?"  The same confusion and reality settled in, in Australia.   Within a year knew I didn't want my kids to believe that was normal for the rest of the world and knew I could supplement lack of culture with travel.

Within the first year in Australia I learned about church and Jesus.  I heard the teaching of Jesus.  Love, tolerance, patience, kindness.  I fell in love with this man. If this is God, I want him.

See, I was raised in a very diverse neighborhood in Minnesota, with a Catholic raised atheist mother. A strong woman with gay friends and a Cuban boyfriend.  Interracial dating and gay people still appeared on Opera as "freaks" or show topics.  I was raised by a single mother who put herself through graduate school, worked nights and sacrificed everything for her kids.  I was pushed to find a god for myself, weather she believed or not, and this Jesus guy seemed to bullhorn the passages of my own mother,

I moved around in Australia, Sydney was great, yet very white.  The sun and beaches took over the conversations more than immigration and abortion.  It was a fantastic life, and one I will soon return.  I missed and will continue to miss the diversity of everywhere else I lived in my life however.  Moving to inner city Melbourne was a welcome culture bath.  My son's bilingual school of 250 boasting children from 26 countries.  This was great!  From Melbourne I made the worst mistake to date.  We had a year to go anywhere in Australia, and Cairns, the vacation spot of the earth was accessible!  Let's freaking go!  Live on vacation that's a great idea! Well, very quickly the "small town" feel became an unwelcome presence.  I remember going to the South to adopt Titus.  I came back talking about how nice everyone was.  Little did I realize, people were nice to me, because I was white. Low incomes, low education, and a white supremacy over the indigenous people of Cairns hit me like an ax to the head.  Words like "coon" thrown out of the mouths of uneducated white women.  Racist slurs and hatred to the oldest people on the planet.  It was like my soul had witnessed intellectual and compassionate hell.  An adult attacked my child when finding out who he was, intolerance and bigotry everywhere.... in the most beautiful place on earth.  How could paradise be so ugly?

I missed America.  I missed cheap living, fast food and my brother.  8 years of distance and I was ready to return.  James and I joked we would make it 3 out of the 6 months with America's political bullshit.  It was easy to watch from 8,000 miles away. "Good luck with that shit, I'm here in a safe educated society with healthcare and a view!"  I could do it for 6 months!  It was in an airport bar having lunch en-route to America where we learned of the atrocity of Donald Trump.  We had a laugh, but thought very little of that.  What a joke.....right?

Then the unthinkable.  I got sober. My sobriety is a whole other story, and one I will tell another time.  However, America got me sober.  My life changed, my family healed, so we pushed and pushed to stay.  We tried to put out the fear in our minds every day we risked Jaxon's life being sent to school with the potential of his death in a mass shooting.  We put out of our minds the growing political circus of 2 racist, homophobic, women hating republicans screaming to kill innocent families and sending non-cared for vets to more unending wars.  All the while screaming their religion, claiming to follow a Christian god.  That's JESUS right?   Jesus loves the NRA and Carpet Bombs?  Jesus hates gays and regulates bathrooms?  Jesus refuses refugees and immigrants?  WHAT PART OF THE FUCKING BIBLE DID JESUS SAY THAT?!?!?!?!

I was able to push the hate aside, on TV.  It wasn't my life.... It wasn't my friends......until it was.  People I love, people I respect, shouting to damn the poor, and blame the weak.  The statue of liberty began to fall and weep.  Religious freedom became religious zealots spewing hate and bigotry into open mouths and fueling attacks on brown children. My child's ability to urinate became topic of laws and bills with no basis on fact or reality. A cultural distain  for a Civil Rights movement so freely given to me. Fox News and Bill O'Reily a common form of belief and fact. Worship of money and celebrity made way for the rise of everything I despise.  The hate.  It has gnawed at my soul.

God bless America... and nowhere else.

So I leave.  I leave to where we care for the sick and educate the poor.  To carbon neutral cities and protection of life.  I return to a way of living that doesn't claw at my soul. I didn't want to leave my new community of love and support through sobriety, but even the most respectable of those, those who claim to live a life of tolerance and patience, scream on Facebook to refuse the refugees and reject the immigrant.  They claim not to live in fear, yet worship the NRA and love their guns. the walking contradictions of  all we claim.  Jesus loves you....not you though.... or you....

The lessons of this life.  MY story.  My life of poverty and needing ungiven support in America, to the life of financial ability given later in life, gave me a perspective I don't know many to have.  We pay more in personal taxes than anyone I know, and would rather support a single mother, than Wal Mart. this very small act so many refuse.

So I pray.  I pray for the least of us. I pray for peace.  The irony that Donald Trumps own the Miss. America pageant, when all those bitches want is world peace. I pray for what I believed Jesus to want.  I pray for what Ghandi and Martin Luther, and Budda and Allah all wanted.  Love.  I am in control of nothing, except my reaction.  My reaction is to leave.  I take with me, my new friends, I have more love in my personal life right now than I have ever experienced.  I can't just live with love of me.  I need love of each other.  This was a hard lesson, but one I am glad I own now.