500

I feel sad and unsettled tonight.

I was sitting here at the computer reading blogs and eating a can of white asparagus (exciting, balanced dinner, no?) when this wave of...whatever...hit me. I very nearly started to cry, something I've not done outside of an airport for quite some time now.

September 11th came and went, and I didn't even reflect adequately on the significance of the anniversary. I just went about my day, realizing that it was a somber one only when I needed to go to the US embassy to get a statement saying that I have a clean criminal record (visa processing requirement) and found the consular section closed in observance of the events 6 years ago.

I sat and thought about it for a moment, remembering where I was when the planes hit, feeling the weight of where we've come since then, and feeling generally numb.

I feel very detached sometimes, from family, from "home" (that ever-elusive concept), from friends that I've left behind, from the US and all of its influence on me as an individual and on the world at large.

I am ambivalent about politics at home, yet sense in my bones and breath the importance of the official war reports and campaign tactics being presented at the moment. And still I feel disconnected, apathetic. As if no matter which direction we go, the final result will be the same. I wish I were more passionate. I wish I could bring myself to read or watch the news on a daily basis. I'm aware that ignorance and my current stalled state of mind don't help the situation at all, but I also can't pretend to feel any other way at the moment.

People here often ask my views on politics, on what it means to be an American expat; they wonder whether Ricardo and I will live in the States at any point, and ask why I left in the first place. People want to know why I often appear Brazilian on the outside. Why my language, style and mannerisms seem to project something so different than is expected of an American.

I have no good answers, even when I ask the same questions of myself.

I simply know quietly, intuitively, that certain things I believe in and certain others I don't. I know when a path feels right, or when a decision is so wrong that I am afraid I will be physically ill. These things I know on a corporal level, yet for all the analyzing I do in other aspects of my life, for all of the writing about emotions and processing of feelings I do, I can't seem to form rational, accessible explanations that would allow others to understand.

I feel very lonely most of the time. Some of this is my own "fault", I suppose, for once you step out of your home city, once you board that plane, once you acquire a new perspective that is different enough from the things you originally were taught and believed in, it is impossible to go back. Physically, of course, one can always return to a hometown or an old group of friends, but always with the sharp realization that relationships have changed forever.

For a long time I struggled with an identity crisis. I was very ashamed to be American, and this contributed to my feelings of isolation, both in the US and out. When at home, I recognized that I had changed in my time abroad and that I no longer related to my friends - and even my family, in some respects - in the same comfortable way as before.

When I was in Brazil, or in Italy, or wherever on my travels inbetween, I had to deal with the fact that I also didn't fit in with my new peers, and that worse yet, I was known for being "the American". At the high school I attended in Southern Brazil, many friends playfully nicknamed me "gringa". I pretended not to care, but each time I heard the name (which is used to refer to all foreign people in Brazil, not just Americans) I cringed, as it reminded me of the identity and background with which I felt so ill at ease.

It took literally nearly a decade, but now I am over this crisis for the most part, at least in the sense that I am no longer ashamed to say that I am American and speak English in public (yes, it was that bad at one point when I was a teenager).

I still feel strange about many aspects of being an American, but it is more in the sense that I identify more with a culture to which I have no "legitimate" claims than with the one in which I was raised.

Once an ex-boyfriend of mine commented that I was destined to be lonely and unfulfilled my entire life because I was in love with a country, something that could never love me back.

That made me laugh, but it also made me sad. Not because I expected to have Brazil fill some sort of hole in my heart, but because I realized that likely nobody would ever understand how that country affected my life. I still very much feel this way.

So, sitting here in our flat in Maputo, contemplating culture and identity and the role my home country has in the world, I feel quite alone.

Perhaps this is why I like cats so much - they always "get" me, no words or passports required...