Breaking Up with the USA

A once proud American reconciles the truth about her toxic relationship with her country and decides she's had enough.

The author after voting for HRC in 2016.

Nothing could have prepared me for the pain of making the decision to break up with the USA. I’ve been through breakups before — including a divorce and estrangement from my toxic family — but this is easily the most painful breakup of my life. 

Just over 13 years ago, I cried at Mile High Stadium as the military flyover happened. A few months before, a friend of mine from church had lost her fiancé in combat, and the display of patriotism brought up the pain and sadness I felt when learning of his death. I was proud to be an American. I cried when I heard the Star Spangled Banner. I was deeply patriotic and deeply loyal to the USA.

In many ways, I suppose the gradual erosion of my bond with the USA mirrored the arc of so many failed relationships — the initial loyalty began building into resentment and emotional withdrawal. As a child, I adored the USA with a fervor that only the naive optimism of youth can manifest. The USA’s strength and power made me feel safe and protected. I reveled in her ideals and convictions, reassured by her purported commitment to liberty, equality, and steadfast morality. I actually believed her when she said she was here for the people, run by the people. I didn’t yet know the things that would eventually drive a wedge between us.

A note: I use the words “she” and “her” when describing the U.S. on purpose, because everything is political, especially language. Nation states are generally referred to as feminine, which is designed to evoke the feelings of motherhood; it’s why nations are referred to as the “motherland.” I believe that it is designed to evoke the same feelings of love and devotion one tends to feel for their mothers. However, the USA is more like a white, abusive, tyrannical father whose only loyalty is to himself and his domain.

On the subject of tyranny, my disillusionment with the USA began when I became a mother. Having a child born with a congenital heart defect thrust me into a world I hadn’t known before: the fight to survive American systems. I would spend the first five years of my son’s life not only working to keep him alive after he had a heart transplant as an infant, but also battling the system just to make sure he had the medical insurance he needed to access care.

Although my son was born with a qualifying disability, he was denied social security and I had to appeal, which he finally got after I sat in a courtroom, crying and throwing myself at the mercy of the judge. Over the course of his life, I have had to maintain that battle every single day.

He was once kicked off of social security when my income went over the threshold by $8. I was faced with two choices: I had to make sure that my income did not go above that amount in order to be sure he maintained access to care, which also meant living in poverty, OR I had to make enough money to have employer-sponsored insurance and a side gig to pay the $24,000 out-of-pocket costs for the premium, deductible, and copays. For most of the last 11 years, this has meant being a single parent while working the equivalent of two full-time jobs, teaching 18 credit hours many semesters while also seeing clients and doing consulting work.

A medical bill for the author’s son.

Every time I suffered the indignity of needing to beg for my son to have access to healthcare to survive, I lost a little more hope. 

With each subsequent disappointment, however, a few more cracks emerged in the facade until the USA’s mask began to slip entirely, revealing the ugly, manipulative traits she’d kept well-hidden. Like a typical abusive relationship, when things would stabilize, I would put out of my mind all the times that I was harmed.

And I may have been able to maintain this dysfunctional dance, but Palestine opened my eyes. I watched as Israeli “soldiers” mocked the people they slaughtered with impunity, all paid for with my tax dollars. I watched as a man held a child aloft, sans head, crying with him as I witnessed his devastation, paid for with my tax dollars. I have watched our government systematically gaslight and lie to the people, providing the settlers in Occupied Palestine with healthcare, education, and a military engaged in ethnic cleansing and genocide, paid for with my tax dollars. 

The very virtues I’d once celebrated —freedom, justice, compassion — have been exposed to be mere lip service. The things I once believed could never be true was a facade. This country, built on the genocide of Indigenous people and the genocide and enslavement of Black people, was never about justice or liberty. Indeed, Indigenous people were seen as “merciless Indian savages” and Black people as “not fully human.” Of course a country built on that foundation would prove to be rotten to the core. The reality is that this — genocide and corruption — is who the USA has always been. 

She didn’t change. I did.

The reality? I was deeply brainwashed, like many young brown kids who are taught by our elders to assimilate and to fit in. Patriotism and loyalty to the USA is often even more significant for us than it is to our white counterparts because there is a core ideology in the USA that brown and Black people don’t belong here and that we are lucky to be here. White America treats us like Cinderella — we’re supposed to be grateful to have “opportunity” and the chance to live here and, as such, we should express only deep gratitude and reverence for the USA. We are not allowed to criticize or complain about our mistreatment; we aren’t even supposed to KNOW or acknowledge that it exists.

I, a good little Mestiza girl, played my role well as a youth. I dressed up as a pilgrim for elementary school plays and believed the hype about the USA being the best place on Earth. Deep inside, I always knew there was something wrong with the narrative I was force-fed, because I felt it in every indignity I endured. As a young child, waking up before dawn to go with my grandmother to clean hotels, watching her scrubbing on her knees and seeing the white owner dismiss her rudely showed me a truth I wasn’t supposed to know. Living in a town where the brown kids constantly experienced racism showed me the truth. Seeing my sibling snubbed for honors in high school while watching the students he’d tutored being honored showed me the truth. Watching him bravely call out the administration at his graduation for their racism while they literally hid their faces during his speech showed me the truth I wasn’t supposed to know.

I didn’t have the language I needed until I started college, because telling the truth about the USA was forbidden. In college, in my first sociology class, my instructor taught us about white privilege. I read Peggy McIntosh’s article 100 times that semester, having finally found the words to describe some of what I’d lived. It was then, at the age of 17, that I began the slow deconstruction of my ignorance. 

Ten years later, with my infant son’s illness, each new outrage and violation of trust chipped away at my willingness to remain in this toxic union. Once the disillusionment set in, the decline in our relationship proved rapid and irreversible. I could no longer overlook the harsh truth that the USA I once (thought I) knew and (naively) cherished had been exposed; corrupted by her own hubris and callous disregard for the values she’d once convinced me she stood for. I watched, helplessly, as the power brokers continued with policy choices that make living as a U.S. citizen nearly impossible.

I made the decision to seek a path out just a few weeks ago when I was doxxed. My private information was published on the internet, along with threats of rape and violence, because I had dared to criticize a Republican. I needed to seek protection from community and friends. One friend is teaching my family hand-to-hand combat and safety. I am now always armed. I am an anti-gun advocate who is armed because my family has been threatened. 

I knew it was time to end my marriage when my ex-husband and I had a fight where, at the end of it, I caught my own eyes in the mirror and I didn’t recognize myself. I knew I needed to get out. That relationship was changing me into someone I didn’t know and didn’t want to be. I was divorced within a year. 

Standing in my friend’s garage last week holding an AR-15, I again became someone I didn’t recognize. I don’t know this version of myself, this version of me who is fully prepared to take a life to protect my family. I don’t recognize the hard edge to my face, the hypervigilant eyes, the constant scanning of my surroundings, the feeling of always being ready to pounce. My relationship with the USA has changed me, and I am becoming someone I don’t recognize and someone I don’t want to be.

The USA has broken my heart and my trust. I know if I stay, it will break my soul. 

So I’ll continue along this path of disentanglement, knowing there is no returning to the naivety of my youth, where I believed her lies and felt pride in my connection to her. No amount of nostalgia can breathe life into an unhealthy relationship once the veil has been lifted. The USA and I, for better or worse, have reached the inescapable point of irreconcilable differences. As the martyr Aaron Bushnell said: This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal, and I cannot live like this.