Where to Go, What to Do?
A question for every generation.
A spiraled web of possible futures cascades before me at an alarming rate. Split images of living here or there, working in this or that, savoring uncertainty or sipping in comfort flash by with hot color. I am sitting in the small quarters attached to my bedroom known as Dobby’s Room, home to a single desk and bed with a sliver of space between them. A grey duvet cushions my tailbone and amplifies the heat building up between my bones, a bonfire of anxiety lit by extreme images of ICE assaults on innocent civilians, lawful residents being deported for no reason, and the overarching narrative of the United States approaching its inevitable collapse (amongst other concerns: ongoing genocide, civil war, World War 3, the collapse of our shared efforts to delay the climate crisis, courtesy of a staunch demon disguised as a dying man who spent his youth coked out beneath the sun with no SPF, face contorted into a permanent scorn after an ego-induced stroke).
Oop.
Where to live, what to do? My partner and I have been preparing to submit his green card application to make it easier for us to share a life together between Mexico and the United States. Easy, however, does not seem to coincide with the potential danger of said partner being detained for no reason. Easy does not coincide with the pervasive fear that settles in an innocent heart when it is told—through media, policy, and the actions of a corrupt government—that it does not belong. Easy does not coincide with wondering, at any hour of the day, if we and our loved ones are safe, if the violence of a government that prefers to profile and persecute first, prove second (if at all) are only a random encounter away.
The decision to move back to the United States was a result of several pros and cons lists (assigned to me by my therapist) that I analyzed in an attempt to assemble an idea of the future. I had realized, just over a year ago, that it was hard for me to envision a future where I stayed in Mexico forever. Although my Spanish is improving, the language barrier is an omniscient haze that dilutes my ability to connect with people, grow in my career, and feel an acute sense of belonging, despite the profound belonging I feel with the friends I have met throughout the city.
Despite my love for Mexico, I miss home. I yearn to commit to a place for a long period of time, and for that place to be somewhere Mijael and I can a) both grow professionally and b) be closer to family. Based on those yearnings, we decided that California made the most sense. We spent months preparing the paperwork, studying the rent prices, and giving a heads up to family and friends. Our plan was to move within a couple of years, until the news, our friends, and the all-consuming voice of fear questioned whether or not this was a good idea. If and when the green card application is approved, we’d have to move within six months. What if things are the same, then? What if they’re worse?
–
I scream into a pillow and stare at the ceiling. Dobby’s room protects me from the constant movement of the outside world, a world in which the majority of my friends and I have begun to feel as if our youth, our hope, our ability to perceive certainty alongside our ideas of the future have started to dissolve. Maybe this is a part of growing older. Maybe this is specific to living in a political climate that is near-identical to a fascist regime. Maybe this is a symptom of our online culture and the normalcy at which one can scroll through ten different tragedies from ten different countries in a matter of seconds.
Okay, it’s not a big deal. If there is anything my generation is capable of, it is adapting: to the COVID-19 pandemic, to the changing climate, to a generation of politicians who have failed us in every sense of the word. If we do not move to the United States, then we can stay in Mexico until things are better in the United States.
But what if they never are better? What if the entire notion of moving to the United States is an outdated hope? Two months ago, I visited my dear friend Grace in Seoul, South Korea who I had known since university. She contemplated aloud how crazy it was that South Korea grew to become such a wealthy and influential nation, considering her parents immigrated to the United States to give her a better life—now, they were all immigrating back to South Korea.
It seems the United States could be headed for the opposite narrative. The videos I have seen (and shared) joking about how insecure the U.S. is compared to other nations are bountiful. America, the land of overpriced healthcare, mass shootings, inadequate public transportation, a lack of work-life balance, growing wealth inequity, and a shriveling middle class. What if it’s all downhill from here?
The anxiety demon ignites the tips of my fingers and traverses me through a funnel of videos, articles, and social media posts reaffirming the inevitable collapse of the United States. One video forecasts the different ways in which the United States will fall as a global power, another contemplates how China will surpass the West (in ways it has not already), another details how the U.S. will become one of the worst places to grow old in. I start searching for the best places to live amidst the climate crisis, political instability, and societal collapse. The list does not include Mexico or the United States.
Australia is too far. Canada is too close. Japan and specific countries in the European Union glitter on the screen. A deep dive into the potential routes for relocating to Japan or the E.U. brings me to a bright, albeit manic, conclusion: it is actually possible; my career qualifies for Japan’s HSP Visa, Mijael qualifies for a German passport through his family.
I stare at the screen: Japan or the E.U.? I start a pros and cons list for moving to both. And then I start to laugh: What the fuck am I doing?
Right now, we are in Mexico. Right now, I am learning Spanish. Right now, I am surrounded by people I love who I want to spend time with. Right now, we are living a comfortable life in a precious little apartment, free from the stress of adjusting to a new city, a new home, a new reality. Right now, I am planning to visit my parents on a frequent basis, to show up for the people in my life in the ways that I can until I am closer in proximity.
I inhale the stale air in Dobby’s room and come to two conclusions:
I want to be present for our life in Mexico for as long as we choose to live here
Reddit, YouTube, and TikTok are probably not the best sources to consult for major life decisions.
I close the pros and cons list and open a new document, dropping several legal firms, immigration lawyers, and family contacts I can potentially reach out to for advice on whether or not the United States is a safe place for my partner, for us. Over the next few weeks, I reach out to all of them.
–
A month later, I return to the land of horrifying news to spend time with my parents.
Newspapers, napkins, and half-eaten plates of pesto pasta cover the table. We drink wine, wonder aloud what movie we should watch, and abhor the current events. A conversation about the ICE kidnappings and general anxiety around racial profiling leads me to a question I never thought about before: Is it even safe for my partner to travel in the United States? We were so focused on assessing whether or not we should move that I overlooked the fact that we had already booked our flights to visit the family in December.
Christmas without Mijael? The thought makes me want to cry. Two glasses of wine in, I spiral around the interior maze of fear that I suspect is one of the administration’s main OKRs for a successful term in office—incite the biggest fear, the best fear: fear of safety, fear for our loved ones.
Does this mean that Mijael won’t be able to see my family until 2028? I Google “is it safe to travel in the U.S. right now as a Mexican,” filter the search to “Past month,” and read through the horror stories: European tourists who were detained and deported, a father who was kept in a holding site for a week, multiple Reddit users recommending that tourists avoid Los Angeles at all costs. Los Angeles is not Sacramento, but it is California…I send out more emails inquiring for legal opinions on whether or not traveling as a tourist is safe, especially for someone who might be profiled, before taking a sip of wine and staring into the abyss.
When decision anxiety rains over my vision, it comforts me to think about the pasts I was never a part of. The pasts of generations prior: of my grandparents, of my great grandparents, of all of the people who ever felt insecure about what the future held or how to navigate it. I wonder what my great grandmother thought about when she boarded a ship from Japan to the United States in the 1800s. I wonder what my grandmother thought about when she left Hawaii for the mainland. I wonder what each of us thought at any point of our lives when we were scared, unsure, but ultimately alive, challenged with the very thing that makes life worth living: a choice.
There is uncertainty in everything: when we get inside of a car, choose to take a job, tell a person we love them, step outside into the world for a walk, a drink, another day. The point is that, despite uncertainty, despite anxiety, we always end up doing the thing—doing our part as a person in this world: a friend, a daughter, a husband, a colleague. We show up. Regardless of how we do it—tired, optimistic, at our best, at our worst—we are doing it, simply by being. By showing up, we show up for ourselves. We show up for others.
I remind myself that fear makes things appear much larger than they are. My parents are a five-hour flight away. If necessary, my partner and I are accustomed to spending time apart, having done long-distance before. Most importantly, we have the liberty of choosing whether or not we want to take the risk of being in the United States in the first place. Our daily lives are in Mexico, a place where he belongs. A place where I am learning to belong, too.
–
The next day, I meet my friends in Sacramento for a break from all that is required to be a person in 2025. The plan is to paddle on the river, drink craft beer, barbecue a grand dinner and pretend that we are kids again—or rather, stop pretending that we became adult versions of ourselves that dissolved the kids we once were—and have a proper sleepover.
Light spills over land with the precise warmth and reach I consider Californian. Raquel and I talk about things the way we learned to talk about things, the way we learned our friendship, driving together to meet our friends. When we arrive, we scream and shout—Ashley, Shauna, Maia, Andrew, Nick—organizing ourselves into this car or that car, borrowing this and forgetting that behind.
In the car, I get a call from Antonio, the first friend I met in Mexico City. He asks me if I am okay. I tell him I am and ask him why he’s asking. He says that there are protests in the city, demanding that the foreigners get out. He wanted to call his friends back in CDMX to make sure we were okay.
Oh—I’m visiting my family in California, I say.
Thank god, he says.
I thank him for calling. We tell each other we love each other and hang up. Shauna hops into the car, Andrew starts the engine.
–
I am grateful that I am out of the city, but I am neither surprised nor offended at the protests, which feel long overdue, considering the growing discourse around Mexico City’s gentrification and lack of government action to prevent displacement. A year ago, I wrote a piece about this. Despite xenophobic language containing its own dangers, I understand anti-foreigner sentiment, especially when it is targeted towards a specific kind of foreigner, one who does not attempt to learn Spanish, one who treats the city as a seasonal playground, one who considers being nomadic a personality—or worse, a personal achievement.
The fact of the matter is that the majority of Mexican people are being priced out of a city they call home. Although the root of this problem is not exclusive to foreigner presence (displacement is rooted in political and policy failures, not foreign demand), the Mexican government has done nothing to protect the Mexican people over the past ten, twenty, thirty years. Rather, it did the opposite: encourage the process of gentrification by establishing partnerships with companies like AirBnB, so as to profit from the influx of purchasing power.
Mexican people have every right to be angry, and the anger needs a place to go. Though it is impartial and incomplete, it is only natural for people to yearn for a clean cause when the true source of what oppresses and exploits us is abstract, goliath, and difficult to imagine impacting with large-scale change: the government, the system, neocapitalism. If the image of the privileged foreigner is the vehicle for the fight against gentrification, then I posit that it is our responsibility, as such foreigners, to see the vehicle to its destination, so long as it does not harm us along the way. In response to the anti-foreigner sentiment and general discourse around gentrification, change is on the horizon, including recent efforts from President Claudia Sheinbaum to build 1M low-cost housing units and CDMX Mayor Clara Brugada to implement key policies positioned to prevent displacement, including an income-tax for property owners and a Reasonable Rental Price Index. Not because the government agrees that foreigners are the problem, but because they see the suffering of a people and their demand for change.
–
We glide along the streets of Sacramento. Trees, cars, and light traverse around each other like threads in a scarf. I open my WhatsApp to a number of group chats popping off about the protests. Crowds of Mexican residents are marching around the city, chanting “Gringo go home!” I scroll through photos of signs reading Go back to your country!, Expat = Gentrifier, and Yanky go home. I laugh, not because the sentiment is funny, but because the first thought that comes to mind is: Mijael is not wanted in the United States, I am not wanted in Mexico.
Where are we going to go?
What are we going to do?
We are going to jump into the water when the sun weaves a silk from the sweat on our skin. We are going to laugh when our friends laugh, because it feels good to laugh together. We are going to forget, for a moment, about all of the possible triumphs and horrors that traverse before us, so as to know what this piece of life feels like: the maternal rock of a board on water, the rich silence of a Saturday spent outside, the helium joy of being together. ☷
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With love,
Your favorite capybara ☼ AKA Travis Zane
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