What is awful about life in America?

As seen from a European perspective by a European living in San Francisco.

Why don’t you just leave?

Several years ago I moved to San Francisco to be with my (wildly) talented spouse whose career requires us be here. So before you say: “Why don’t you just leave?”, it doesn’t feel possible. “Why don’t you leave?” is not always the most productive response to a person taking note of what isn’t working well and is not impossible to improve for the better of everyone.

(I will also write: What is great about living in America? Every coin has two sides.)

My window is slightly open and I hear somewhere in the distance a man screaming, clearly struggling with life, mental health and quite probably homelessness.

Homelessness is endemic and chronic in San Francisco and many who aren’t on the streets are struggling and scared to fall between the cracks. This city that you might imagine is filled with Californian relaxedness is in fact often stressed in high tension that electrifies the air and not in a good way.

Many San Franciscans will argue it’s not that bad and to state crime and homelessness infringing on safety and quality of everyones life is to be exaggerating. I beg to differ. I have lived in German, in the UK and spent large periods of time repeatedly renting apartments, for 3–4 month timeframes, in South East Asia. I know what it feels like to have to navigate sketchy parts of town to ensure a safe passage home and how to assess my surroundings without being overly stressed about it. It is second nature to me to keep my eyes and ears open. No matter where I am in the world.

I have never experienced such nonchalant normalisation of people in mental health distress as I have here in San Francisco; in what the rest of America calls some kind of liberal hotspot. I used to assume liberal to mean: caring but I clearly got some wires crossed in my comprehension. In 11 years of my coming and going, and eventually moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, the treatment of humans as a kind of expendable waste seems, on the face of it, to only be getting worse.

Homelessness and the risk of becoming a victim of crime.

It seems that is all I can speak about on a daily basis. I used to think “It’s maybe not as bad as some people make it out to be.” For me that changed the day I chanced on a report of a photographer having been murdered on Twin Peaks for his camera. From that day I stopped feeling comfortable to take my camera out with me.

My form of relaxation and self expression, a large part of my raison d’etre, is to take photographs. Anyone telling me: “Just don’t worry about it. Live your life and deal with it if it happens” is welcome to depost a post-dated cheque with me. I will only cash this cheque if I have had my camera stolen. If you don’t feel comfortable committing to my camera replacement then don’t tell people its safe. It really isn’t. I am neither young enough, financially affluent enough, nor emotional resilient enough to deal with the financial and emotional repercussions of being attacked for my possessions.

How does this now affect my life?

I leave everything, sometimes including my phone at home. Am I going to far with the phone? Yes, I know I am. But it isn’t backed up at the moment and I don’t want to lose my photos and videos. And I don’t have the time it takes right now to shuffle files and I shlouldn’t have to buy cloud storage so that it’s ok for someone to steal my phone. Asking me to spend money to prevent the fallout of crime isn’t a good solution. It obviously IS the solution I will have to concede to, but that doesn’t make it good.

I rarely bring out a bag because bags could signal ‘things & wallet.’ I am glad that it is winter because I feel safer with my wallet in the inside pocket of my jacket.

Just leave: We already covered why I can’t.

Nowhere in the places I have previously lived, on smaller budgets than I have here, have I experienced so many restrictions on my daily living. To me this is neither the American dream nor is it a life worth paying so many taxes for. It’s not an increased quality of life.

One of my clients lives in Poland, her and her husband each won the American greencard. They didn’t move her. They carefully thought about their quality of life in Poland, their opportunities and social status and concluded that coming to America would mean to downgrade their healthcare experience, their working lives, dramatically increased work hours and decreased vacation. Their quality of life would have been so significantly worse in the USA than in Poland that they let their Greencards lapse and purchased a home in Poland instead.

I think people on a higher income might be better buffered against some of the experiences that I am feeling but nobody is sheltered from having their car broken into while out on a grocery shopping errand. Nor does greater wealth protect against a camera grab, potentially at gun point.

Americans seem to have normalised these stories

I think I need to write about these experiences more, if nothing else then to remind myself to not normalise them; to remind myself that I have lived in places and societies that handle things differently.