Heartbroken

My heart feels frozen tight — time to talk about America.

1.

I spent the first three months of this year writing a book. Attempting to, at least. I did it in dreary cafés in Lisbon, Portugal, where I’m from.

“Dreary?” Yes. Despite the tourism adverts Portugal is impossible in Winter. The Summer is good, sure. But so good that people gaslight themselves into thinking Winter is “not that bad”. And, as a consequence, nothing is prepared for it. Central heating is rare, buildings are not built to deal with it, everyone just freezes over for 6 months. Cafés aren’t better—there isn’t one cozy spot in the city.

So that’s how my first three months of the year were spent: in dreary cafés, trying to type fast enough to keep my fingers from freezing, telling people around me to shout into their phones quieter.

2.

Now I’m in America and things couldn’t be more different. I’m still writing every day, that part is the same. But that’s the only thing that is the same: I’m typing this from a beautiful bench on a beautiful patch of grass on a beautiful campus filled with staff catering to my every need to make writing easier.

And I should feel good about it, and I do feel good about it, but I also feel heartbroken for my home country.

3.

I’ve been to America before. I even used to work here, in Oakland, not too far from where I am now. But I think at the time I couldn’t really understand what I was looking at.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes”, as they say.

I now get America, I get what is distinctive about it, I get why it is “the best country in the world”.

America is rich.

4.

I’ve heard lots of cope about the virtues of being poor before. Lots of cope. It usually comes from people who are relatively rich too.

Truth is that being rich rocks and being poor sucks. I’m sure you can find ways to make yourself miserable even if you’re rich—just another option it buys you. But have you experienced freezing over? Going to bed hungry? It’s not fun.

5.

America is rich and my country is poor and I don’t know what to do about it. My country is in a terrible negative spiral where the tax burden increases on the young so politicians can get the votes they need to rule from the old, due to the inverted population pyramid. I have no idea how you fix that. I have no idea how you fix that.

“Move to America”. I don’t want to move to America. I don’t want to be part of a deliberate ‘brain drain’.

America—in its proxy war with the U.S.S.R. in the 70s—armed rebel movements in Portugal’s former colonies/overseas territories. We ended up giving all of them away. They’re not in a great state. Just yesterday Guiné suffered (another) coup.

We lost our land, partly due to America. We’re culturally colonized by it too, myself being a prime example. Ought I let my body be colonized as well? I don’t want to move to America. I want to live near my family and friends.

I want my country to be rich.