That awkward moment when I stopped feeling American

So last night, while listening to Johnny Cash and sipping on my second double shot of whiskey neat at the kibbutz pub I tried to convince my friend that we should totally hit up Facebook to crowdsource a good tattoo parlor nearby so I could get a mermaid drawn in that little dip where my neck meets my back.

“Ok… but why a mermaid?” my friend asked.

“Because I am a mermaid,” I answered, and with the sagacious clarity of one whose first double shot of whiskey is already mellowing in that space just below the heart, and as God and Johnny Cash as my witness, I put that feeling into words for the first time.

All immigrants are like these denizens of the sea – mermaid, merman, whatever: We’re stranded between two worlds, our tongues traded in for a new identity that will never quite fit, where we want to belong to both worlds, but can’t fit into either no matter how hard we bend and stretch ourselves into skins.

(Don’t worry, Dad. I didn’t get the tattoo.)

And yes, I like that dual-identity – and the ability to be both, sometimes at the same time, to feel that connection and sense of belonging in both worlds, here and there.

But this morning when I woke up waaaaaayyyyy too early, sludged with mascara, and wearing the smells from the night before, not only did I wake up to a really bad hangover, but to a new reality that jolted me out of the morning-after stupor: Somehow, while all of us in Israel were sleeping, the US and Iran signed an agreement and my shimmering scales were traded for legs.

It’s complicated: With me, it always is… But while we were sleeping, the world made a choice that left me feeling like I have no choice: And now, I can never go back.