Rediscovering ["America"]

It's decided, we're moving to central Washington state later this year. It'll have be nine years I've been an expat. Wow. 

I know with the "discovery" bit I'm playing on the ole CC trope, the continent discovery-cum-genocide of its indigenous peoples. But I know I am also inescapably, and maybe even irreparably a descendant of that cause-catastrophe, an inheritor of the power seized from the vanquished, a great grandson of those rapists and pillagers, a distant cousin of those men who enslaved their biological brethren, and I write these words with the social capital I easily inherited, with the financial capital I lazily earned, with the white supremacist legacy that I wear as closely as my very skin. ... I'm poised to rediscover for myself what's called America, the reality parts, the pretending parts, the parts that inspire, and the parts that terrify. Some familiarity will surely greet me, but I anticipate many things will be strange, or strangers to me, or strangling.

Unless you've lived in a foreign country, and lived in a foreign country where you cannot speak the language everyone else speaks like you can't say "this is the most fun I've had in ages" or "did I ever tell you you're such a wonderful friend?"; and lived in a foreign country where you cannot read what everyone else can read like you can't read "no bikes allowed" or "bluefin tuna steak"; and lived in a foreign country where everyone looks different than you and standing out is personally a sore spot; and lived in a foreign country continuously for nine years... Unless you've lived in a foreign country, you may not understand, and you may not understand me now.

...I wrote the above a few weeks ago. This is all taking time to sink in, and it's important that I stake a sociopolitical claim as a repatriate. To not mislead others in taking my return to the U.S. as an endorsement, at least not a blanket one. We return during a national discussion about leaving. Trepidation will surely temper my first steps back on the land, steps that will need become a march in the streets just as necessarily as a stroll in the park.

We'll arrive in November, likely. I want to let some snowflakes sink into my skin.