American Unhappiness: Roadtrip Reflections One Month In
It’s 1 p.m. and I’m in a stale-smelling hotel room in St. Louis, Missouri regretting this trip.
I know these moments come. I know travel sometimes chafes like a polyester blend and leaves me uncomfortable. It can make me tired and grumpy, nervous and anxious, regretful and asking myself why (why!!) I thought this was a good idea.
So I will breathe through it. I will ignore the stench in this room I’ve been forced, by bad planning and bad luck, to pay $200, or four days’ budget, for. I will focus my sleep-deprived eyeballs on this screen and I will write until I feel better or at least until I understand myself more, and only then will I make decisions like what do I do next and where do we go from here.
To Recap
Let’s review. 18 months ago, I left New York because I wanted to see the world. I wanted to see who I was in it. I wanted to learn and grow and feel uncomfortable. In the last year and a half, all of that happened, most of it in South America.
I went to New Zealand and learned that not all travel is created equal; the culture and the people matter just as much, if not more, than the natural attractions and the food. I stood on a boat passing through the Milford Sound, considered the 8th wonder of the world by Richard Kipling and the #1 travel destination in the world by TripAdvisor, and wondered when it would be over.
New Zealand wasn’t for me, but Buenos Aires was; I went back and spent the better part of a year making empanadas and meeting friends and slowly incorporating “vos” into my every sentence.
I didn’t know what was next. Diego was finishing grad school. The peso was floundering. Winter was coming (in the southern hemisphere, at least). In Michigan, my sister was graduating and I wanted to be there for that. And I’d long been considering bringing my on-the-road act to the roads in my home country; I knew there was so much of the States I had yet to experience and I wanted to get in there and explore it. And see if I could imagine myself moving back there.
So I booked tickets for Diego and myself. Diego sold, gave away, and packed up 13 years’ worth of belongings. We showed up in Chicago on May 1 and our new adventure began.
Or our pre-adventure, rather. Our first four weeks were spent in and around Michigan, visiting my friends and family, introducing Diego to my life, and exploring mostly that which I’d already explored. We went from Chicago to Battle Creek to Ann Arbor; we went to Detroit and Cleveland and Grand Rapids. With the exception of a Megabus from Chicago to Ann Arbor and a car ride we bummed to get to a friend’s graduation, we had a vehicle available for any trips over an hour and otherwise navigated public transit with ease. Diego met my aunts, uncles, grandma, cousins, sisters, dad, friends, and several of my friends’ dads, by chance, when we stopped at the parish I grew up near in order to pee. Everyone loved him, and he and I loved interviewing every city and imagining where we could end up, even when the answer was, again and again, “not here.”
Then We Hit the Road
48 hours ago, the actual adventure began. We arrived in Indianapolis after a roundabout journey from Battle Creek to Detroit to Cincinnati to Indiana’s capital. It was the first place we were going without a safety net in place: we could stay for two nights with my cousin, but then no more; we didn’t have a car; we didn’t have plans on how we’d move on.
Indy was complicated.
It was good, in many ways—Hattie and Maddie received us with open arms and made us feel so welcome; I had one of those beautiful moments when you realize that someone you’re obligated to love is also someone you very much like (I hadn’t seen Hattie in a while and always thought she was cool, but hanging out with her more than confirmed that); Diego and I had a gorgeous day to explore downtown; we all went out dancing and managed to find a bar that played lots of Lizzo and also had skeeball.
It was not good in a few ways. Run-of-the-mill inconveniences, like not sleeping well and losing my hairbrush. And more serious, more off-putting ways, too. They were brief and fleeting but they made me aware of the scope of the difference between the United States and other places I’ve traveled, even if what I was doing—backpacking around and exploring new places—was the same.
The first happened when Diego and I were walking by the Indianapolis Public Library. There was a cool mirrored feature of one of their walls, so I was taking a photo of Diego. A police cruiser pulled up and called him over.
“You need to stop that,” the officer said.
Diego froze and looked to me.
“What?” I asked. “Taking pictures?”
“No,” the man answered, shifting his sizable weight around as he turned to pull up the computer on his console. “This says that there’s been a complaint that someone is lurking around, hanging off of streetlights.”
I peered into the car and read the screen with him. An all-caps scroll listed details about the purported public nuisance: he was a black man in a black sweatshirt, spotted fifteen minutes ago. I told the officer that we had only just walked by, that we were tourists taking photos and nothing more, and pulled Diego closer, gesturing to his black t-shirt and brown skin.
“Sorry, then,” he conceded before beginning to drive away. “Have a good one.”
I’m not trying to make a mountain out of a molehill; nothing remotely bad happened to us. But it was the first time that a police officer in the United States had approached me as I was going about normal, perfectly legal business, and it will stick with me for that.
Or, said differently, it will stick with me because it was the first time I had a glimpse into what black and brown people experience in dealing with the police in this country. I felt kind of violated, and we had only gotten a slightly stern, slightly racist talking-to. I thought about Michael Brown (I’m only miles away from Ferguson now), about Oscar Grant, about Stephon Clark. I thought about the principles of justice being bent every which-way by the explicit and implicit racism that governs our country. The racism we must acknowledge. Must confront. Must heal.
Diego and I continued on our way. We stopped at a South Bend Chocolate Factory outpost for some ice cream (it was 85 degrees and also, every day is a good day for Moose Tracks). We sat outside, looking at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument we’d later climb, and chatting, in Spanish, about our impressions of downtown.
The older couple seated a few tables in front of us got up when we started talking. They turned around, stared at us momentarily, and did a haughty sort of half-turn before moving to a table a few feet away.
Again, it wasn’t anything, really. It wasn’t as obvious as the guy who’d skateboarded past us on the street in Chicago and shouted, “Take your Spanish currency and shove it up your ass!” But it made me feel unwelcome. It made me feel embarrassed to share a citizenship with them.
And a few blocks later, when we passed the Indiana State Capitol building, I looked at the perfect dome and saw the shape of Mike Pence’s tennis-ball hairline as he espoused gay conversion therapy. I walked through the lush green grass and imagined state legislators coming out on this lawn for a break after a harrowing day of stripping freedoms away from women. I later explored Mass. Ave and saw the colorful flags of LGBTQ support—local businesses putting up a rallying cry over the state’s failures to secure basic rights for LGBTQ people—and that was nice to see, but I’d already decided: I couldn’t live there.
I couldn’t live here in Missouri, either. I’m in the closest thing to a metropolitan area that the Show-Me State has to offer, and the lack of everything I value is stark. I’ve been here in St. Louis for a few days (and recovered since I wrote the introduction to this post, largely though writing the first half you just read), and putting aside the humidity (brutal) and the high youth poverty rate (40%), it has some loveliness; the arch is truly stunning and the gooey cake is perfect. But it’s not my kind of town.
I didn’t articulate until I was walking from downtown St. Louis towards Soulard what my kind of town was.
I was on the phone with Camilla, a gorgeous human I met in New York who’s now living in London. I was telling her about how hard of a time Diego and I were having finding fresh food in St. Louis—56% of the city’s residents live in a food desert; what’s even more striking than that is St. Louis doesn’t even break the top 20 cities in the States re: worst access to healthy food choices. Camilla shared her experience with the plentiful farmers’ markets in London.
I happened to walk past a tiny farmer’s stand as we were talking about just that. I pressed my phone to my ear as I scanned the the dusty potatoes and double-pitted cherries slumped on a plywood shelf. I bought three pounds of the latter for $3 and continued my walk, eating misshapen cherries as Camilla and I discussed what a dream city needs to contain.
We talked about access to fresh food. We talked about parks. We didn’t talk about diversity, affordable housing, culture, art, and music, but I know we agree those are important. We talked about friendly people you can build a community with, good and affordable public transportation, and the ability to walk to the majority of places you need to go.
The thing is—I’m not sure that city exists in America.
The Unhappy States of America
The wishlist for my future city comes from the list of things that make me happy. The older I get, the simpler I realize it is. It’s not really about having an extensive shoe collection or going to galas. I was more consistently happy in Buenos Aires than I was in New York (though I wouldn’t say I was overall unhappy in New York), even with less money and less status. The difference makers were simple, boring, even: fresh produce, parks, sunshine, cultural events, social support (like healthcare and public transport), and free time to spend exploring it all.
As Diego and I travel through the United States—we’ve visited Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and St. Louis so far—I’m looking for a city that meets those standards.
I haven’t found one.
I’ve told myself, several times, that things will get better when we get to the West. When we get to the mountain air of Denver or the organic markets of San Francisco. To places where diversity is more celebrated than feared and communities are more open than closed. And we’ve cut out Oklahoma and Texas from our itinerary in order to more quickly get west and assess if that’s true.
But even if it is true, and that’s where Diego and I could imagine living, would we be able to? I looked at the cost of an apartment in those cities and wondered what kind of job, with what kind of hours, I’d have to work to be able to afford it. And I wondered if I’d have time left to do all the things we’ve just established are pivotal to my long-term wellbeing.
I’m not alone in thinking like this. The US ranks 19th in world happiness, behind counties like Norway, Canada, Costa Rica, and Israel. (We’ve never made it into the top 10, and we’re getting more unhappy, not happier, over time; last year was our worst ranking ever.) The six metrics used in the ranking are GDP, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, social support, generosity, and perception of corruption. Differently worded than my criteria, but by and large painting the same picture.
The US’s gap in happiness isn’t due to economic issues; our GDP is fine. (We knew that, though; we’ve all read the think pieces that tell us money itself cannot buy happiness, not once you have a certain amount of it to not have to worry about the day-to-day.)
Our unhappiness as a country comes from the social factors—from not having choices in life, not having people to count on in times of difficulty, not trusting politicians and public figures, not being generous towards others—and the health ones, including obesity, substance abuse, and depression epidemics that other developed nations don’t have.
And we’re not set up to change that, either socially or heath-wise.
At least I can imagine how the United States would try to change health outcomes. I imagine we’d need comprehensive free healthcare, including addiction support and healthy living counseling. More bike lanes and parks, as a start.
But the social ones?
I keep thinking of a book I read in a communications class in college called Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. The title references how local bowling leagues, where neighbors came together after work, disappeared in the 90s and 00s, as membership also declined in community organizations like churches, political parties, and the local PTA.
Author Robert Putnam charts the rise of community organizations in the 50s and 60s, when technological advancements at work and at home offered Americans more leisure time than ever and a civic-minded generation (kindled by leaders like JFK and social movements like desegregation and the women’s movement) used that leisure time to gather and work together to improve their community.
Putnam talks at length about possible causes for the decline of that sense of social capital and community. Maybe it’s suburban sprawl, where we all have our own houses and our own spaces and we meet our neighbors less. Maybe it’s racism, drawing us tighter and tighter into in-groups and shunning new people. He thinks the heart of it, though, is technology, which individualizes leisure time, encouraging us to connect but only virtually.
Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps it is all technology, and perhaps on the coasts—in Seattle and San Francisco and New York—the established technological powerhouses and their start-up scions have already realized the destructive power of their industry and have tried to beat it back with policies that support public health, human rights, and community-building, having the money and the influence to do so.
And perhaps everything in the middle—everything we’ve driven through over the last week or so—is being left behind.1
I was talking to Isabelle about this today. About this feeling that a huge swarth of our country isn’t inhabitable, not by our standards. And about the injustice that it is, in fact, inhabited, in large part by people who didn’t have the opportunities that we had and may not have the option to find a place buoyed by tax income and geographical location that would give them a better life.
And we talked about how we want to just leave. I do, certainly; I want to move to Mexico, maybe, or back to Buenos Aires, and not look back. But Isabelle said it well:
Onwards, On a One-Way Ticket
Before this trip began, I would’ve said I was 75% sure I would live in the U.S. again in the near ( < 2 years) future. Several weeks into it, I think I’d reverse those percentages.
There’s a lot I don’t know, both about my own life (and what kinds of opportunities, responsibilities, and needs it’ll include) and about this country (we still have several states and many hundreds of miles to go), and maybe that projection will change. But right now, being here, I realize several things:
I don’t feel safe in much of the U.S. It’s so hard to build community here. My values aren’t upheld by my government. The United States is actively and outsizedly contributing to the irreversible destruction of the earth and the possible end of human civilization.2
And it’s both easy and cripplingly lonely to crawl into the comfort of an upper-class job and a nice apartment building and a leased car, to never step outside but for the walk to the garage, to not touch the ingredients that make up your food, to throw away pounds of plastic every day, to not look at the consequences of your decisions and to not consider the lives of people with far less agency than you. I know that. I did it.
I think I’m ready to do something harder. To go out and look for other ways to live. To build community everywhere I go. To pursue my health and my sanity and my creativity. And that’s not enough—living like that will not fix the problems I’ve seen here in the States, it won’t right the wrongs—but it’s what I need to do now. So off I go to do it.
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