estadounidense

I leave for Argentina in a week (sort of).

I cannot fathom nor comprehend the emotional weight of the journey back to Buenos Aires.

I don’t remember much of my leaving.

I remember that I flew through the 2020 New Year, away from the Ezeiza International Airport to Auckland’s.

I remember while I was in the air, the world changed—tilted-off-kilter-off its axis.

The world was different when I landed—a different year, a different time.

I remember the way it felt to land in Aotearoa—how empty and hollow—how sad and confused I felt.

From the moment I left Argentina, I have wanted to go back.

And I tried to go back.

I did.

Instead, I was jettisoned to the United States on a repatriation flight from Indonesia, to Taiwan, to Los Angeles, to Cleveland, to Boston while the now-old news pandemic first unfurled itself unto the world.  

And, amongst all the mess, I have thought about how I felt in Argentina since the day I left.

And I still can’t quite put my finger on what it was—what I felt.

I know a lot of it was love.

I think most of it was was love.
But that love—that love—it opened the door to Argentina’s culture, joy, and language—and I fell in love with all that, too.

And now on March 10, 2022, I return to the Argentina that I love with the door cracked.

And I feel scared that maybe I’ve loved so much from so far away for so long that I am destined for disappointment.

The disappointment of an imagined hero’s homecoming.

Whom am I saving except myself? …“always further into fulfillment’s desolate attic.”

The weight of all the expectations I have put on a country and a culture that is not my own.

I leave for Argentina in a week, and I’ll be doing the same writing on this website that I did on my Watson.

Granted, it will be different insofar as the Fulbright is different from the Watson.

And, also granted, that I am far different than who I was on my Watson.

What remains the same is that I’ll write here regularly about all the ways I am making a fool of myself again across cultures.

Being an American in another country is weird, I think. This time it feels less grandiose and more habitual—I hope to lean into this transience differently; I hope that I can curb some of its acuity.

For those that care, my Fulbright is all about rights-based approaches to mental healthcare—I am grateful to have the opportunity work with the same hospital I worked with in 2019, documenting their strategies and approaches to upholding Argentina’s progressive but flawed national mental healthcare law, La ley de salud mental N°26657.

But my Fulbright has also been about a grand reckoning of what it means to be an American.

I have spent the last year seeking out an American culture that I can call mine—one that exists out of capitalism and oppression—outside of guilt and shame.

And all I have been able to find is deep fried food, State Fairs, Halloween, the Super Bowl, the American mall and the struggle in pursuance of the American Dream, whether it is real or imagined, whether it was ever real and was always imagined.  

And within these “American” things I have found certain things that I love that I feel a deep connection to.

They make me proud because they honor my mother and father’s sacrifices.

They make me proud because they honor my sacrifices.

I hope that while I’m in Argentina, these culture bites will keep me company when I feel lonely; the Catch-22 being that the thing that makes me feel most lonely as an American traveling is that it is the American culture that pushes me to the edges of loneliness the most.

The United States is a challenging country to love, and I still don’t know if I am supposed to.

Hell, I also think that for Argentine people, Argentina is a challenging country to love.

However, the difference is that the U.S. is a challenging country to love because we as a nation make other countries challenging to love. We pick and choose war—scheming for sanctions that hurt children more than politicians. We are in this very moment bombing African and Middle Eastern nations and upholding Israeli apartheid all the while we point fingers toward China and Russia, both of which are arguably more similar to the United States than most other countries elsewhere in the world.

I digress.

I am going to Argentina and by going to Argentina I am made more American there than I am in the U.S.A., what a funny thing.

I hope that you all follow along with the blog throughout my nine months in Argentina.

You might notice that the website is different than it was before, it’s because I am trying to make myself employable so that I might be able to pay back the student debt I sunk my family into in pursuance of the aforementioned American Dream, whatever and whomever she may be.

You should look around! Read some poems. Etc.

If you’re a Broadsheet regular please note my last day is Friday, March 5th.

I am only now remembering how challenging it was to end these posts.

Odio los aeropuertos, todavía.

Abrazos y saludos,

Sam