Why Do I Want To Move Abroad?

TL:DR- Because I want to live a comfortable and happy life, despite the world falling apart. 

I have touched on it throughout all of my other posts but I will express it more artistically here.

As I have mentioned, I am burnt the fuck out. Over the past few years I have felt like a chained animal, wearing the grass thin as I pace back and forth, tugging at my bindings. Even as my body withers, my muscles tense at every shadow that passes by. What little of the world I can still see is grey and ashen, the life choked out of it by the ravenous greed of man- for his thirst for power and control is all consuming. As the shape of my captor draws ever nearer I back into the corner of a soggy cardboard box that was so graciously tossed my way. Hackles raised, teeth bared, snarling at the hand that would pretend to feed me, only to strike instead, should I let my guard down. I hear the laughter of men as the Earth Screams in pain. They delight in destruction and seem to always seek new ways to violate and despoil. I feel her pain as if it were my own, and I weep silently with her in a sea of deafened ears. 

The fear and disdain and rage that grips me when I simply try to exist in this place is becoming too much to handle. When I was a teenager, I was ANGRY at the world for how stupid the people in it seemed to be. I was idealistic and believed that, despite it all, intellect would win out and the decrepit rot of society would eventually wash away. As an adult, humanity has shown me how incredibly naive I was, and I am just disgusted.

This is how I feel about much of America these days. It might be greatly magnified by the fact that I live in a red state. Maybe I wouldn’t be quite so disenchanted if I was in a more progressive area, but it’s too late for that now. Moving within the States would not be enough anymore. And, obviously, I can’t know that I would be any better off in Europe. However, I do know that many European countries have environmental initiatives, and are actively working on their Paris Climate goals, even if it is still not enough… The fact that their general populace doesn’t denounce it as a fucking hoax is a massive upgrade. The truth is, as an ecologist and environmentalist, not a climate scientist, but a conservationist who has studied the reports to the best of my abilities, I don’t believe that we are going to survive the apocalypse that we have started. We needed to take MUCH larger actions, MUCH earlier. Now… I think we have passed the point of no return and runaway warming is already underway ensuring our extinction as well as that of the majority of life on the planet. On the grand geological time scale, humanity came to power in just a split second, and I believe that we will wipe ourselves off the map just as quickly. All those precautionary tales of hubris and arrogance clearly didn’t get through to us. In the end, we will have barely been even a millisecond on that time scale, but our impact will probably have far longer lasting effects than our actual existence did. That’s the thing about fast mass extinctions, they are immensely deadly. We already know that we are the 6th mass extinction… let’s just hope that we aren’t the last. 

Alright, now let’s claw our way back out of the pit of existential dread, wave to Artax as we crawl out of the swamp, and get back on track… Escaping the king of the ROUS. 

The world is dying all around and I want to try and be happy for the time I have left here. To me that means, not fighting for my right to autonomy everyday, or fearing for the lives of my loved ones, or wanting to die everytime I walk into my job, or wanting to punch someone in the throat everytime I mention getting a flu shot because they just HAVE to let you know how bad vaccines are. I want to be around more like minded individuals, in an environment I enjoy, and preferably with a job I don’t entirely hate. I don’t believe I can easily find any of that here anymore. Not to mention, even if I could, the external threat of the rabid right is gaining momentum and even the blue states may not be safe in the end. Of course… if it comes down to it… nowhere will really be safe. 

NO! No more existential dread! We are pivoting and focusing on what I can do to improve my future! For me, that means leaving this shit behind and starting fresh somewhere new! 

I will realize my dreams, different though they are now. I will still build the future that I want. I will break my chains and escape this place, and fly free once more over the snowy mountains and into the shifting northern lights of the night.

That is why I want to move abroad.