Fear Makes You Do Stupid Things
How did I end up living in Mexico, and then clawing my way back to the US?
It all started with fear. In 2015 and 2016, I watched as idiots I went to school with got into their pickup trucks bought with daddy’s money, festooned them with Confederate flags and the wildly out of context “Don’t Tread On ME” flags, and paraded through town. The cops watched approvingly. Some of the men had guns displayed. So I got a job on the other end of the state, supposedly where liberals lived, and moved us while I was pregnant.
I thought I would be safe. For a time, people weren’t craning their heads to look at my husband and I as if were were exotic, scary animals. And then 2016 kicked into high gear. I saw ICE constantly out on the roads when I was driving. I may have even seen a few deportation busses. There were raids, rumors of raids, and police all working together with ICE because now they could go after people that made perfect criminals: polite, hard working, and compliant on the one hand and all to easy to demonize on the other to gain public support. I was in mourning when that white supremacist Trump finally cheated his way into office.
I watched as every single thing I had done to be able to sponsor my husband came undone. More and more “unofficial” requirements were announced all the time, along with ever more punitive official requirements. Then, we started to hear about people who were told to come to their marriage interviews. People just like us, who were trying to regularize their status, who were told to come to their interviews, were ripped apart and deported. They were told they would be safe, they were told they were “good” for doing “the right thing” and then they were punished.
By the time my husband’s family knew what we were planning, we were deaf to their warnings. All I could think was that if deportation were going to happen, then at least we could avoid the fear and confusion of ICE literally disappearing my husband. All I could think was that many genocides start with curtailing rights and dehumanization, and that deportation is a stop along the road to extermination. All I knew was growing up in Michigan, which may as well be every stereotype of the deep South. Little pockets of sanity, big expanses of racists.
I should mention, I’ve also got a legit anxiety disorder, so that obviously didn’t help.
So we left. We didn’t plan very well, and I didn’t realize I would be living in quite the situation I was in. It was like our own version of Brexit, only we eventually admitted we had done something incredibly stupid. However, how stupid is it, how cruel is it that a man with a wife and kids, who had held a steady job and had been a stay at home dad, that he’s considered worthless?
I have no doubt its nothing to do with him personally, and everything to do with being a “spic”. It has everything to do with the deep hatred this country has of anyone brown. The disordered worship of toxic white masculinity is what keeps us apart, and threatens us when we are together.
