I said when Trump won the election that we were leaving to the UK. I am a dual national with the UK and the US, but I never actually bothered doing anything about it before. But my daughter is queer and she is just not safe in the U.S. in our view*, so we are taking the opportunity to get out. I think some people here didn’t believe it, but we have our plane tickets and we will be there on January 21st.

We are leaving on the 20th because we are thinking that if Trump starts rounding up immigrants right a way, a lot of people who are in the U.S. legally will freak the fuck out anyway and who knows when we’ll be able to get tickets. So we’re just leaving. I’ll have time to see what happens when the fascist rapist felon get sworn in and then we’ll be out of here.

I was originally going to wait until I got a job to go because it will be easier to get a family visa once I get a job and, of course, I’ll be eating through what money we can scrounge together from things like selling my car, but I have already had two interviews cancelled because I’m not in the country and I’m sure having a U.S. phone number doesn’t help (I realize I could have spoofed that with a UK number, but it literally didn’t occur to me until today). Even with the interviews I have scheduled next week, the chance of me getting hired before Trump gets into office are pretty low.

We will be staying with an old high school friend of mine for a few days until I find a place to rent by the week as I look for work. We have absolutely no plans about where to live. I will go wherever the work takes us as long as we’re there.

My wife is going to stay behind and take care of affairs like selling the house. My daughter is in online school, so she can stay in that until we get the family visa and can enrol her in a UK school. Because she’s my daughter, once she has a family visa, she can immediately apply for permanent residency status. My wife will also be able to much more easily get a job on a family visa.

The nicest part is that we can bring the dogs over without having to put them in quarantine. That won’t happen until I get a job either, but I am glad we will be reunited soon.

So we will be off in a week. Will I still post a lot on Lemmy once we get there? That remains to be seen.

Goodbye, America. I don’t know if I’ll ever come back, but I hope I can at least return to visit.

*I know some of you are going to say she won’t be safe in the UK either. They are banning conversion therapy there and schools have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to bullying queer kids. Plus, the education system there is not going to turn to dogshit to the point the U.S. already has and it’s only going to get worse. It’s all around better for her there.