Boxes surround me as far as the eye can see. The room smells of cardboard and packing tape. We've just moved into the first home we've owned in Australia since coming from the US seven years ago.
The house is a mess; there's so much work to be done, but I can't seem to focus. I keep staring off into space in disbelief.
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One shot in third night of anti-Trump protests
One person was shot and wounded as demonstrators continue to protest the US election outcome for the third night in a row.
My homeland has just elected Donald J. Trump to be president of the United States of America.
Patriotism isn't something the majority of Australians embrace; it carries a bad stigma here. But in the US patriotism isn't always associated with that same negativity. Yes, extremist hate groups usually justify their causes under the banner of patriotism in America, but pride of country is something most Americans feel. I did anyway. Until now.
Now I'm heartbroken and so deeply ashamed and embarrassed for my country. I sit in this room, thousands of kilometres away from where I come from, and feel the distance profoundly. I feel lost. I'm not a citizen of the country in which I live now, and I don't want to be connected to the country to which I belong.
Our countries, our culture, our traditions, our histories shape our identities. In America we practically learn the national anthem with our ABCs, and we pledge our allegiance to the flag every day in elementary school. Individuality and personal achievement is celebrated, but so is the sense of a "united" states of America.
It doesn't feel that way now though. Not from here anyway. Unity has crumbled. The divide looks cavernous. Pundits say it breaks down to class, urban versus rural, globalisation versus anti-intellectualism. Whatever the reasons, it's clear that American values and priorities have been ripped to bits in a cultural tug of war.
Every box I open reminds me of home. I've lugged my life from town to town, relationship to relationship, over seas and continents, job to job, house to house, and in each and every box is evidence of an American. A heart that beats red, white and blue. A blue-eyed, freckled-faced, California girl raised on hotdogs, hamburgers, and Tator Tots. Twinkies, Band-Aids, and Coca-Cola. Christmas in winter, Easter in spring, and the Fourth of July in the dead hot heat of summer.
I find keepsakes and photos in these boxes. Memories of who I was and where I came from. A place that almost seems imaginary now. Here are pictures of me with family back home. Most of that family I don't speak to anymore. Most of them voted for Trump.
Their support of Trump went beyond politics for me. Some readers may remember the article I wrote in May when I discovered that my mother was a Trump delegate. With my mixed-race husband and daughter, I could not reason with the cognitive dissonance of letting people into my life who support a man that embraces the endorsement of the KKK and gives hate groups a megaphone in governing a nation.
And so I contribute to the divide out of hopeless resignation.I come across a photo of myself at age five in a sundress, roller skates and a cape, my mother kneeling beside me, and our dog squeezing in for the photo. I miss what I didn't know then. I miss believing in everyday heroes and the goodness of people.
While I look at this photo I mentally transpose over it images I've seen in the news lately. Protest marches in the streets of my country: violence, people burning effigies of Trump, people screaming at each other. Are these my fellow Americans? They're more foreign to me than any immigrant I've met.
In Detroit the day after the election, a group of elementary school children started chanting in the cafeteria at lunchtime to a table of Latino kids, "Build That Wall! Build That Wall!" Some of the Latino kids started crying. Is this the "Great America" Trumpians will build? To them I say there is nothing great, decent, or justifiable about racial profiling and violating a person's civil rights. You are no fellow American of mine.
Somewhere in this room is my grandmother. Her ashes are in an urn in one of these boxes. When I find her I will hold her and I will cry. She grew up during The Great Depression. She lived through segregation and desegregation and witnessed the progression and transformation of the US in the '50s and '60s.
I will apologise for all that has been undone and try to explain that I did what I could do to stop it; I wrote articles that I poured my soul into, I had heated debates that risked relationships, I sent in my absentee ballot and voted for a future of inclusion and progress and for what could have been the first woman president.
I voted for the America I remember and that my grandmother helped create, but it wasn't enough to keep it alive.I haven't found her yet. Instead, I've just found a little American flag on a wooden stick. Miniature. The kind we wave around at Fourth of July celebrations.
I don't see strength and unity in its stars and stripes anymore. I don't see freedom and equality. I see the sharp division of red and white and the hypocrisy of what it's supposed to stand for.
This flag doesn't represent me waved under a Trump presidency. This flag doesn't represent me when the people holding it chant "Build That Wall!" I put it back in the box, and my heart breaks a little more. But I'm no patriot of that America. I'm an expatriate now seeking peace, refuge and a renewed faith in the goodness of people in my new home, my new land of opportunity. Grateful to be a welcomed immigrant, ready to embrace a new red, white and blue.
Aubrey Perry is a Fairfax Media columnist.
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