“She had thought about coming back here many times in her five-year journey through what she liked to call the Americas, by which she meant the mainland states. They were not, she had many times insisted to Grillo, one country; not remotely. Just because they served the same Coke in Louisiana as they served in Idaho, and the same sitcoms were playing in New Mexico as were playing in Massachusetts, didn’t mean there was such a thing as America. When presidents and pundits spoke of the voice and will of the American people, she rolled her eyes. That was a fiction; she’d been told so plainly by a yellow dog that had followed her around Arizona for a week and a half during her hallucination period, turning up in diners and motel rooms to chat with her in such a friendly fashion she’d missed him when he disappeared.”
Clive Barker, Everville
I think about that quote all the time. America is not one country - it's a bunch of small countries trying to work together while some of those countries DESPISE the others. I don't think it's truly possible to feel fully American, because an Iowan is different from a Mainer. Hell, a Mainer is different from a Bostonian.
I will say - I lived in Ireland a long time. I often say it was the last place I felt happy. But I also never felt like I belonged there either. I felt ACCEPTED, but I never belonged (and they frequently said I was the least American American they ever met, I was nothing like my countrymen, and that was a COMPLIMENT). I think a lot of Americans idealize the dream of living elsewhere and it takes a long, long time to integrate, and I think Americans integrate even more poorly than people who come here from elsewhere, because Americanisms are so deeply ingrained and we aren't taught well about other cultures.
That being said, I do frequently wish I stayed. I'd maybe belong there now if I'd never left..
