Miss America: a Love Letter.

Thoughts on the country of my birth as I spend time driving around the Western States.

Dear America,

 I miss you, but we need to talk.

2 years ago we decided to take a break and see other people, and now that I’m back in town, I wanted to voice some of the sentiments that have taken shape over the last few years.  

I’m concerned about you, I think about you frequently, and I miss you.

I miss thrift stores, national forest boondock camping, folk-punk street bands, old pick-ups and suited to booted cowboys.

I miss smoking herbs with naked strangers in creekside hot springs, rattlesnakes, tacos, driving lonely Nevada Highways in a straight line at 85 miles per, under mournful stars, screaming out the window in the wide open American Night.

You offer the best and the worst expressions of what humanity can be.  You had so much potential and enthusiasm, but you got into some fucked up drugs at a young age, and went down a dark path.  Now you sit at your computer, finding explanations and theories that match your beliefs and provide a target for your resentment, fed on broken dreams.  You are so extreme, erratic, and passionate.  And in a way I love that about you.  But I also watch you from a distance and see a scared traumatized child trying so hard to project an image of confidence and strength.  Let down the mask America, let the tears flow.

You talk about freedom and liberty, complaining that they are being taken from you. Yet you are like a prisoner who doesn’t want to be free.  The prison cell is comfortable and familiar, and the sunshine beyond the walls terrifying.  There is a part of your psyche that doesn’t want to heal, the neurosis so deeply rooted that you identify with it, and wouldn’t know what to do without it.

I get that.

I resemble that,

Its just sad to watch, and heavy to feel in my heart your suffering. 

Now for the good news, America.  Your troubled past is the hope for your future.  By confronting your demons, realization and progress are possible.  Your pain is your potential.  Sometimes the healing can’t start, until you get so sick that it forces a move.  Hitting the bottom is often the precursor to starting the climb back up.  So bottom out America, let yourself scream in anguish as the night gets cold and dark.  The sun will return and warm the soil again.  Life knows what its doing.  The medicine is here, will you choose to let it in?

I attempted to forget about you.

But it didn’t work. 

I love you, no matter what happens.

I am you.