I’m done with America.

This post is a collection of semi-organized thoughts.

Just when I was starting to think I could stay here in Kaufman for at least the next ten years of my life, Roe v. Wade was overturned and the Texas GOP Permanent Platform for 2023 released.

As an autistic person, I already have to spend a lot of time convincing the world why I have a right to exist as an autistic person. As a lesbian, I have spent a lot of time explaining to men why women don’t need men in their sex lives.

I’m so tired of all the political bullshit. I’ve been unhappy a long time, and progress has been so slow. Roe v. Wade was a catalyst to numerous civil rights that are now in question, up to individual states to decide. Why must a basic right be up to my state?

Why must my ability to live my life as a lesbian, as a woman be up to whomever is in charge in my state? For me, it’s a heteronormative old white man who has too much money to know what it’s like to sort out whether he’s spending this month’s income on his bills or his groceries.

Why must a basic right be up for debate at all?

I don’t trust my country. I don’t trust that the remainder of the rights people before me spent their lives advocating for will be preserved.

TX Republicans want to make their ideals into laws that cannot be overturn or repealed by future governors or national laws.

What is even the point anymore? Like, I really don’t understand.

Through autism burnout, I have realized that the life game people play where they don’t question anything is utter bullshit.

• What is the point of voting, if my vote means zilch?
• Why the fuck would I want to bring a child into this country — this state — after this? (I’m tokophobic, so it wouldn’t happen already, but if ever there was anything to convince me to “try”, this would not be it.)

When I go out in public now, I worry much more about whether the men I see believe that women should “know their place” and place their men on pedestals. I wonder if the women are worried or if they think they’re the exception. I wonder if the people scoffing at the possibility of Handmaid’s Tale have even read the book or watched the show.

Most of all, I am more cautious now of my identity as a woman and my autistic brain, and the potentially self-righteous men who have the audacity to objectify me as I walk past them. Because all I know is that the only way I will ever get pregnant is through rape, and I would rather die than be pregnant.

Moving to another country?

While the process of doing so is definitely a ways away, I have begun looking at how I could move to Canada. I think having a backup plan would be better than not having one at all.

I chose Canada for a few reasons.

One, it was either Canada or Mexico. I would rather be cold than hot because you can only take off so many clothes before you’re naked, but you can always layer more clothes. My asthma would never allow me to survive in Mexico’s heat; I barely survive in Texas’s heat.

Two, I don’t think I have it in me to move to the other side of the world. Even though I have a lot of family members who oppose abortion, gay marriage and/or interracial family members, I’m not ready to lose them all. I’ll drop the blatantly racist ones, but I can’t tolerate the idea of being completely alone and family-less in the world. Loneliness is incompatible with my major depressive disorder.

Three, Degrassi.

Degrassi created my love for Canada. I started watching Degrassi: The Next Generation in middle school and wanted to move to Canada ever since. The students fought for change and proper human rights, challenged the status quo and totally got to live their lives. The abused kids got out of abusive situations.

I don’t expect it to be the end of my problems or the key to happiness. I’m not putting it on a pedestal, I just don’t think it’s trash. I’ve never felt like I belonged in this country. (This said, I’m still looking at other countries, but I want to stay on this continent at least for now.)

My mindset isn’t the problem, because that’s not going to get me freedoms or access to autistic resources. I can’t mindset my way through convincing a non-autistic person why I need access to resources for autistic people and that autism does not go away after childhood.

Changing my mindset isn’t going to bring Roe v. Wade back. It’s not going to prevent Texas Republicans from repealing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 so they can prevent Black people from voting.

I know what it’s like to not have autonomy.

As a child, my pediatricians would strap me down to the exam table because I couldn’t stop fidgeting. Because I had to self-regulate, and they were annoyed. My mom let them. I wasn’t even doing harmful stims or anything. And the longer I cried while strapped down — the longer I fought it — the longer I had to put up with it.

I know what it’s like to not have control over what happens to your body, because I remember my stepfather forcing me to pull my pants down so he could use his belt on me when he was angry. Saying “no” was perceived as disobeying. When I expressed to my mother, who then told her husband, that I felt uncomfortable showing myself to him, I was told that that was the price of being a bad girl. You know what my crime was? My developing body and the fact that they refused to spend my dad’s child support money on me, his child.

Being 31, being away from all that — I’m supposed to be done with that.

So why is history essentially repeating itself?

I didn’t come out as LGBTQ+ until I was living in a safe place, because I feared I would be sent to some conversion camp program. Now, Texas Republicans want to legalize conversion therapy in a way that those who practice it cannot be penalized for doing so against the will of a “patient”.

I’m tired of the constant political drama and bullshit.

I’ve realized I don’t have to play this fucking game.

Life is not all about work, politics and what men think women should be doing with their lives. It’s about more than who is “left” or “right”.

I don’t want to subscribe to this anymore.

I don’t know what the future of my homeland looks like, but I’ve never felt like a citizen of it — and I was fucking born here.

How stressed and pressed I will be on this journey depends highly on whether Beto wins Texas governor in November.

All I know is, I don’t care to contribute to a government that clearly cares not for its citizens.

I’m tired of fighting for my rights as an autistic person.

I’m tired of fighting for my rights as a disabled person.

I’m tired of fighting for my rights as a lesbian.

I’m tired of fighting for my rights as a woman.

I’m tired of arguing with self-righteous Americans who have forgotten how America is built off stolen land and murdered natives, how this country came to be because of immigrants.

I’ll vote in the elections, but I’m done making the majority of my life about fighting for my right to exist as I am.

Ultimately, I feel like it’s either me and my life or my American citizenship. This country makes me not want to exist. Years ago, a therapist helped me realize that I can fix that — I don’t have to stay here forever. I reconsidered when Trump was elected president, but wasn’t in a place to do so. I’m still not in a place to do so, but I am in a place where working towards this is possible.