Solitos y loquitos

This year, my family and I will feature a unique Christmas experience. We will be on our own. It will be the first time since we moved to the US, back in the summer of 2004, that we will not travel abroad to join our families and friends in celebrating the Holiday season. Moreover, none of them is coming to Austin to make a toast and enjoy Valentina's delightful Christmas turkey with us.

It wasn't really planned so. We were expecting to receive the Travel Document from USCIS on time for the Holidays, but it hasn't arrived yet, so we better not move. Our initial plan was going to Mexico--for the first time altogether since we left, in 2001. And I can tell, it doesn't feel nice. It's not like when you enjoy being on your own because you've decided so. It's rather like the sad feeling of being away from all, isolated like an iceberg in the middle of Antarctica.

Even the most self-sufficient of all immigrants--us, for once--feel the blues from time to time. I have no doubt the hardest part of being out and around, off hometown, is the isolation you run into sometimes. You end up feeling like la India María in the movie 'Ni de aquí ni de allá'.

Whenever I go back to Mexico, I feel like I don't fit there anymore. But I don't think I fit here either. Every single immigrant friend I have talked to about this feel the same.

Why, in the world, are we so stubborn about being away? I'm talking about us, the ones to whom being an immigrant is still a choice. Why are we so obsessed with it? I know why I don't fit in Mexico, and I know also that I don't want to fit 100% here. Nevertheless, if forced to make a decision, I rather stay off there. Which is not precisely the opposite of saying here.

Does it make any sense? Do you feel the same, dear nutty friend?