It’s harder to drive out the darkness this year.
Last year, I was at the end of a mountain-top year with a new master’s degree in hand. Storms rumbled on the horizon, but they were still in the distance.
But, boy—they swept in quick.
Christmas or New Year’s Day, I can’t remember which, I had the bright idea to spend a couple hours looking for work. It had been weighing on my mind, and I thought it would do me some good to submit a few applications before enjoying the rest of the holiday. Instead, it ended with my calling my dad in tears after realizing that I was competing with thousands of people for remote work.
It’s a special kind of hell, being American, Protestant, culturally (if not financially) Middle Class and unemployed. Your skin crawls, and your stomach sits halfway up your throat. You think of the easy way that jobs and money always seemed to come to your family and friends. You start avoiding your own glance in the mirror, because you don’t want to see disappointment looking back at you.
Two months later, and things were looking even worse.
Weeks into the second Trump presidency, stories were emerging about ICE raids sweeping up US residents—Trump supporters, even—and detaining visitors for weeks at a time for minor infractions and misunderstandings. In the span of three months, I had gone from the high of finishing my second master’s degree to unemployed and effectively locked out of my own country. If I couldn’t have reasonable assurance of my husband’s ability to travel in and out of the country for the foreseeable future, then our future would have to be elsewhere.
When the darkness is heaviest, you see the light most clearly, and still it shone: The high school friend who wrote long and heartfelt messages after the inauguration. A cousin who checked in on us and offered Juan her encouragement as he started a graphic design programme. Juan’s family, who, despite my unimpressive and inconsistent Spanish, always made sure I felt included and a part of the family. The college friend I went to France with who became a rock through the trials we faced this year. And one of my best friends who, though we haven’t seen each other in a good many years and haven’t kept in good communication lately, wrote me to say: “I’m really glad we’re still friends after all these years.”
That’s not all of it, of course, but I’m not in the business of exhaustive lists—even if tallying up the light has a certain appeal. I try to say thank you—and I love you—whenever I can, because I have that power each and every single day, to find a bit of gratitude, and add a bit of light back into the world, however small.
The darkness weighs heavy these days. And it doesn’t just come from the world outside. It bubbles up inside, too. The truth is, I doubt the decisions I’ve made and make every single day. I rage at my inability to do more, to go further, to be better. I try to see myself as a friend, to remind myself that history may rhyme, but it doesn’t have to repeat.
I’m missing Buenos Aires: running in the park at night, the cobblestone streets and the neighbourhood parillas, the green parakeets that burst out of nowhere like a Disney movie—the way that days stretch into evening like they could go on forever.
As I race against 4 o’clock sunsets and huddle in pub corners for WiFi, I wonder if we shouldn’t have just stayed put. I give myself the advice I gave my husband the last time we were here, the same advice he’s repeated back to me: The hardest part is arriving. The sun shines a bit brighter for a day or two—you marvel at everything you’ve been missing—and then it dims because things aren’t perfect here, either, with the early closing times and pitiable food and overcrowded trains.
But there is still light: Our landlord, an immigrant, understands what it’s like to be an outsider and the extra hoops you’ve got to jump through—so he jumped through a few extra on our behalf. The strangers who offered to help us through London, as we carried our lives in our bags—souvenirs, books, trinkets. The memories we can’t part with but curse as we cross the city, sweat-drenched in December, for our bus. Even, in some small, small way, the women in Wetherspoons who shout out the first verse and chorus of a half dozen Christmas songs in rapid succession, laughing and applauding themselves after each one.
Despite our doubts, our disappointments, even our occasional despair, here we all are, waiting and watching, driving out the dark.
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