America was supposed to be easier.
A few times a month, I slather myself in petroleum jelly after a shower. Hair up in an old, transparent t-shirt, I put on clean clothes and spend the rest of the day lounging in slippery, sticky skin. It's not really pleasant, but I do it because my skin scales like a snake in the dry, windy heat. When I smile, somehow, the corners of my eyes and the edge of my lips feel faded, pulling against skin that's already pulled tight. It is whatever is the opposite of bouncy.
It's the climate, of course, but it's also the people here and the way there is a a dryness of spirit, of generosity. Everything feels like hard work here, a navigation through unfriendly terrain. I don't think I've shut my brain off once since I got here, even birdsong, sweet as it may be, feels as though it is the foreground coming closer in on me, let alone actions and words and behaviors and the patterns of people I don't know. Everything feels like a scream.
They tell me that the east side of the state is more humid, recalling how they moved away to the other side of the state, because it was so uncomfortable for them, and I think about moving there. But my stomach falls to my knees and my throat clenches and I realize I can't do that - that it wouldn't work.
I don't want to be here.
I'm making progress on my financial goals, but at what cost? It feels like I'll be gone, a part of me, maybe the most important part of me, will be gone by the time I leave.
Maybe I'm being dramatic, but in a place that's so low on energy, on expression, any expression would be dramatic. I'm fighting like I've never fought before. I'm raising my voice, not in volume but in the other sense - in a way I've never (had to) before. It just feels too much, how close it's coming, how much it's trying to take. It reminds a little of China, actually; I feel lost here the way I felt lost there. But, somehow, I have even fewer friends, even less fun.
America was supposed to be easier. America was supposed to be better.