The probability I spoke of in early September is now reality. I arrived on the 23rd, and though it has been barely a week, I have already been having a swell time.
So what’s the deal?
My in-laws—really, at this point, my true family—have been pining for years to have us visit again to be together. My husband and I have spent the last six years going it alone in America, and though we came very far—much farther than almost anyone else in our station—we have come up quite short, being squeezed on one end by an objectively terrible economy (a global phenomenon) and an explosion in mental illness (an admittedly American issue). When times get tough, people need to lean on each other, and despite our provisions and good reputation, we found no such people when the moment of truth came round. It is still crazy to look back and remember in fact that so many of the others who left us in a lurch did so at an even greater expense to themselves than to us. Hardly something to take my word for, but it’s true. As my father used to say, some people need to eat dirt to know it tastes bad.
It’s easy to say the time since my arrival has been marked with the seeds of change, but I will also underscore that much effort has also been expended prior to my trip to keep some important things carrying on, especially stateside. My lawsuit remains on track, and I have been increasingly versing myself on Casetext and Cornell Law as a pro se litigant. My personal life was quite the effort to lock down before my trip – finding board for my four cats, cleaning up the house, and securing all of my property were no small tasks, and they fell squarely to me with my husband working 12-hour shifts until less than a week before our flight.
Why was it so difficult? Well as I said, the goings got tough for everyone stateside, and I discovered that I could not really rely on others I had come to call friends when I had a need that couldn’t be supplicated without substantial amounts of spending. This is part of a long-term pattern that culminated in the months before my trip. People change, and that’s not always for the better – in fact, I would say these days, more often for the worse. I suppose I should have been more suspect in retrospect with the conspicuous lack of favours asked of us when able. I just think Americans are very culturally immature and if a person themselves isn’t insane they are almost certainly tormented by people who are.
This is why I feel called by God to be here now, in Jakarta. It is about much more than just visiting my family, or catching a break from the torment of America. This is my moment to realise my strategy to begin fighting back against the insanity plaguing my country. I don’t know how it will be done, but I know I need to do whatever makes the most sense given my options, and to remain steadfast in my commitment to the moral disposition I share with the rest of the world outside my country. I have committed myself to learning the language, will be traveling the countryside and potentially other parts of Asia, and hopefully meeting the people I need to meet to get my lab going and buoy my own financial independence. America is expensive, and since I’m not giving up on it, I need to foster a business that can supplicate my life there on my own. That’s the plan.