05. Displacement and replacement

An idea? An announcement?

After having given it ten years of my life with barely anything in return, I have decided to leave the UK by April or May and return to Mexico. The plan is to go back to Monterrey, find a job teaching in university or secondary education, and if I can't find anything by August, I'll move back in and try again the next year. If I can find something, my husband will come and join.

I'm just tired, my parents are getting old, my entire family is there, and here it just keeps getting more and more hostile towards pretty much anyone who isn't a retired white boomer in Devon with a conservatory and a Land Rover.

I feel lonelier and lonelier and even those people I used to call "chosen family" have turned away guided by xenophobia. The country just grows colder, more hostile and distant, and the cutesy Grace Dent feature about the Wedding DJ Minuteman finished to break me.

Still going to be needing to sell a few things and officially end contractual obligations. Think what to do about my dissertation, and so on.

Yes, this country gave me a cat and a book. But I’m taking my cat too, and the book can continue. More books. More worldwide. More languages.

I just don’t feel safe or welcome anymore. Not that I ever was.

It would take a great, big miracle, a positive sign, to keep me here much longer. All signs seem to be pointing otherwise. The earth is calling me back to family and nature.

A revolution is least likely to happen here. It is already happening over there, every day, by living and perpetuating the practices of our ancestors. Like today, All Saints Day, we cherish the children who couldn’t grow next to us. Tomorrow, we remember and celebrate the ones no longer active on this dimension. The rest of the year, we continue protecting each other, saying the sweet names of those gone, fighting like hell for the living.

Here my name has been erased and buried alive, in more than one community, by those people in power. My name has been shaken and stirred into gibberish.

I recognise the priviledge of having a homeland to go back to. One you haven’t physically plummetted with tools of your creation. I still have my parents, my family and friends, breathing above the ground. I want to be there for me and for them before it’s too late. My family is a longevous one, and the few people who have died relatively young have done so due to cigarettes and shame. I don’t want the shame to take me or take them. And my heart aches for those who are only left with this horrorland, made to feel parasitic, eaten and purged on a daily basis.

The pandemic reaction, not just from the government, but from the louder general public, united to the so-called unbiased publically-funded broadcasting systems, makes it clear that people like me and you are to blame for their actions.

Nothing is set in stone yet, but this is the sketch of a plan for now. As I’ve mentioned before, nothing but a great, great miracle will keep me in this island for long.

The times are frightening. After ten years. I am no longer willing to die for a country that won’t let me live at peace.

Cynthia Rodríguez Juárez