I Hate This Place

An adapted Instagram diary entry from February 3rd, 2024, from my New Zealand Bike tour.

“Why did you decide to bike across New Zealand?”

I’ve given my socially acceptable answer to this question for a while now. “Because it’s summer over here which makes it easier to travel.” “Because Jima and I wanted to travel together and this fit into his winter break from school.” 

It’s about time I share the real reason for traveling to New Zealand. 

I fucking hate the USA. I hate how our presidential candidates are between a criminal and rapist versus a deadbeat genocidal man with dementia. I hate how, because I quit a job that I hated working every minute of the day, that my punishment is to no longer have healthcare, and that I have to ration out my medicine and doctors appointments, hoping that my body stays in tact with the multiple autoimmune conditions I developed from a lifetime of trauma. I hate how, as an adolescent, I would ask to go to the doctor, and my parents would gaslight me, saying I didn’t need it, which ultimately came from their precarious financial circumstances. I hate how I have $22k in debt from the unforgivable sin of pursuing a college education and people tell me how “fortunate” I am to only have $22k in debt. What kind of sentence even is that? I hate how I feel lucky for not witnessing a school/public shooting, the threat of gun violence before my eyes, even tho I can recount a couple of close calls. I hate how I have friends who will accrue over a quarter million in debt for a medical or veterinarian degree while the minimum wage in their state sits at $7.50/hr. I hate how you are coerced into purchasing a car just to move from place to place in most cities. I hate how your zip code is the highest determinant of your life expectancy. I hate how I live in the richest country on earth yet poverty has been seen in the homes I grew up in, the homes my friends grew up in, it is seen outside my window and on the blocks I walk in my neighborhood, a constant reminder that if you don’t work work work and be “grateful” for your two weeks of vacation a year, you too can easily become homeless and be forced to navigate a world where simple necessities like public toilets don’t exist because our tax dollars are apparently better used to murder Palestinians.

I hate seeing how “cancer is rising among younger generations” as if the reporters don’t understand how feeding microplastics, denying accessible preventative healthcare, a lack of green spaces and a health environment etc. etc. is the very thing that is causing cancer to rise in our youth. I hate how I feel that I must lie to myself, keep a carrot dangling ten feet from my face, in order to think that “if I just work hard enough!!!” that I too can be successful and finally relax. I hate how I had to get my first job at the age of 13 years old where adults would praise me for “learning the value of hard work!” while I labored away the limited years of youth and carelessness that children are supposed to have, while watching states try to loosen child labor laws today, once again cheering on the “work ethic” kids will make when in reality it’s just another way to make cheap labor readily available for the rich to get richer. I hate how, the first time I ever wished I was dead, I was 14 years old, and I’ve battled that feeling for nearly a decade, denying myself the luxury of therapy because most therapists see mental health as a “personal problem” where you must practice meditation and eat more vegetables rather acknowledging it as a completely normal and correct response to the dysfunctional society we have crafted for ourselves. I hate how I have been so happy to be alive and biking across New Zealand, telling one of my best friends how “I think I’m finally getting better” just to get rejected from a job idolized perhaps a bit too much, and seeing the desire to be dead creep back into my brain. 

I biked across Europe to escape my parents. To escape the dread of working a useless job just to live life as a hamster on a wheel. To learn about life abroad and see if things really are better on the other side. I biked across the USA to give me a reason to leave a job I hated but forced myself to stay with because it is a luxury to choose to be poor in the USA if you have the option to have money. I flew myself to New Zealand because it is one of the five backup countries I have on my mind- Canada, Ireland, UK, New Zealand, Australia- that I’ve wanted to try out in case I feel like I need to jump ship back home. I’ve decided to bike across New Zealand because even the “ultra right” here apparently hate Trump as well- oh how I would love to live in a country where that is the worst of the worst. 

“Oh but New Zealand has outrageous housing prices!” “Vision isn’t covered in our health insurance.” “Australia is super racist.” “We just elected a terrible populist PM.” “Japan is homophobic.” “The Netherlands is too crowded.” “The weather in Ireland is trash.”  I’ve heard it. I know that no country is perfect. “The grass isn’t always greener on the other side!” I literally do not care. I go out of my way to ask the locals of the 15 countries I’ve visited what is wrong about their homeland. I’ve listened, I’ve asked the hard questions. And quite frankly I’d rather go somewhere where the minimum wage is $25 and you’re not afraid of getting shot for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If I can pick and choose my problems, then let me choose the problems I’d rather live with. 

I travel because I love seeing the world. I love feeling free. I love the exercise and joy of biking. I like camping. I like meeting new people. But I also travel because the never ending meme of the “trauma of the American experience” is real. I am exhausted of being in a narcissistic abusive relationship with my own country. I hold so much love for my chosen family. For the talented artists and creatives and social rights advocates who triumph from the struggle. I have so much love for my community and my friends, but so much pain from the US. 

So that’s why I’m in New Zealand. That’s why I biked across Europe. That’s why I’ve visited Canada. That’s why I’m heading to Australia next. 

I know that nowhere is perfect, so don’t bother commenting that below. And don’t tell me to “be grateful” either. At this point “be grateful” has just turned into the toxic positivity way of gaslighting people who are struggling into denying them the reality of their struggle. I know there are places that may be “worse” than the US. There are over a million people moving to my country every year, probably with the hopes that their lives can improve here. Things are messed up everywhere. I get it. 

I’m in New Zealand because I feel as though the US is actively killing me and my friends through systematic neglect and harm in the name of profit that will never be seen by the working class. I’m tired of the bullshit.