this diary is emotional, and it will take me a while to write it. that's ok, i'll take my time. Today I can.
It begins in a bar, on a night just like this one, but so much not like this one, four years ago. Four years ago, I was crushed. I had just returned from canvassing in NH, and for a few short hours it seemed like we had it all in the bag. And then it slowly dawned on me that the nightmare is not over. That it would be four more years. I cried my eyes out. I cursed. I thought about leaving this country which had given me so much, but had now downright rejected me. And then -- I swore I will not leave. I was going to take my USA back. The USA I had known as a young immigrant from Eastern Europe. The USA which taught me about tolerance. About inclusion. About racial equality and women's rights.
In my country, everyone hated the Gypsies. The Turks. The muslims. The Greeks.In my country, a homosexual was (and still is) a curse word. In my country, sexual harassment is the norm, secretaries are always young and female, and sleeping with the boss is part of the job.
USA was so not like that. From the moment I stepped on the US soil I was struck by the respect people had for one other. By the non-violence of their interactions. By the relative safety of expressing an unpopular opinion. By the fact that no one threatens you in the subway, no matter how you are dressed.
In the beginning, this tolerance made me uncomfortable. I was instinctively looking for the safety of a censoring majority. For the comfort of gender roles. For the psychological cave of us versus them.I was scared of black people. Of their high voices and sagging pants. Of their accents and of their music. I berated other women for their failure to look womanly enough. i despised the men for not being men enough. They made me uncomfortable. not because i didn't know who they were, but because I didn't know who I was.
But there must have always been a seed of freedom within me. For unbeknowst to me, I had been raised and American. By my grandmother, who went to an American school in the 1940s before the Cold War. She gave me books to read about America. About slavory. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriette Bitcher Stow. "The Quaderone" by Mein Reed. I don't even know if these novels and authors are spelled this way. I was going to look them up by I won't. Let them remain in my memory the way I read them.In my language. I was raised an American by my mother, who never bought into the secretary model. Who was an intellectual. Who decided not to take up a PhD program after the head of the program chased her around the table in an attempt to sleep with her. Who at the age of fifty was finally able to pursue her dream and earn an advanced degree, not in my country, but here, in America.
For many years I lived with a double model, in a conflicted reality. I longed for the comfort of my old society, but used all the freedom this country gave me. until one day, it struck me. i can's go back. what seemed safe before was now crude and threatening. The cave had become a prison. And I realized, after one of my visits "home", that I long to be here, back in America.
And there I was, in a bar four years ago. I had lost my newly found America to a bunch of savages. To the same intolerant voices that had taken my first country away from me. To the crude and threatening isolationist prison. And I swore. No more. Not this time.
I waited four years for yesterday. I waited every day. And in this last year, I fought. I fought with everything I got. And I won. I won back you, my America!
I will be claiming my citizenship in time for the next election. And I will be proud. Because America, you deserved me. And I deserved you.
God bless America.