I Come From Foreign

Taken from The Onion (I’m secretly dying to write for them)

For most of us living in foreign, especially in North America, we’re here for the opportunity, for a chance at a “better life.”

When what you’re leaving is a sweet, island life, “better life” usually means “mo’ money,” cause you know that living in foreign doh mean more time to lime.

So now that the U.S. economy is in a serious downturn, the middle class is shrinking, and we may or may not be in a recession, (hmmmm… who do I believe? Bush or the Economist?) I wonder how many of us in foreign are asking ourselves:

“Why are we still here?”

I’m not big up into politics. I’m more democrat than republican because I think that being a citizen means you bear some kind of social responsibility. I listen to NPR every day, which might label me as a liberal, but really I just like to know what’s going on. I’m more of a disinterested observer looking in than anything else. It’s that whole I don’t participate thing. Chalk it up to my j-school training.

What I do know, though, is that whatever is happening in the U.S. today is not working for the majority of its citizens and something (whatever ’something’ could be) is seriously out of whack.

So, why am I still here?

The economy in Trinidad is supposedly booming. The majority of my best friends and family are back there. I have tons of connections I could parlay into job opportunities. And of course, there’s something special about island life that the U.S. will never be able to give me.

So, why am I still here?

Well, let’s be honest.

America as a whole may look like it’s going down the toilet but I’m still sitting fat and pretty. My lifestyle has not changed with the increasingly dire stories about the housing crisis, burgeoning deficit, and tax cuts for corporations. And until it does, I doubt I’d give repatriation any serious thought.

And let’s go back to opportunity. The reason we came here in the first place, right? If I had stayed in Trinidad, I’d probably be a doctor or engineer or something science-related. They stream you from young and it was science, business, language–that’s it. Full stop. I probably would never have had the opportunity to explore my first love (fiction) or get into communications if I’d stayed home. Sure there’s scope for what I do back home, now that I’m reasonably sure about what I want to do. But I needed to be in the U.S. to see what was out there before I could figure it out. I feel like once you go home, your life is kind of set. Here, the world is my oyster. And I don’t really think I could give that up right now. Maybe when I retire.

Plus, you know how hard it would be to go back? One of my friends back home described herself as trying to live a first-world life in a third-world country. Trinidad has come a long way but the level of comfort and convenience available in the U.S. is hard to come by anywhere else. I’ve been here for almost 9 years now and when I go home, I love it to bits, but I kind of love it, again, as an outsider looking in. I don’t know that I really see it as home anymore, but as my former home. It’s a hard thing to write but an even harder mentality to break through.

And then of course, there’s the bf. Nuff said <3

So, shambled U.S. economy be damned, I’m still here.

Living in foreign is the only life for me, it seems.