“When your home is ruined by other people, you leave.”
This was my husband’s closing remark during our last household debate. “I brought this up four years ago … life is becoming untenable here,” he says.
I feel anguish. Certainly, it pales in comparison to that of Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Texas, families who lost loved ones in yet more mass shootings on American soil. There have been 214 mass shootings so far in 2022.
Pennsylvania’s my home. I was born and educated here. I work and raise my family here. I cry writing this because the thought of leaving … family… friends … my home … is unimaginable, painful, unfair.
Things like an individual’s right to choose whether or not to create a child are being called into question. And other people — who don’t know our minds, our hearts, our souls, our situations — are deciding.
“Love it or leave it.” I never liked that phrase. I never was a quitter. And I never could imagine leaving other people, alone.
Leave Pennsylvania? I think of Ukrainian refugees and know my situation is infinitely less dire than theirs.
Still, I feel … resent … dissent … and mourn the lives we all could have, if only we learned to get along.
Susan Wilson
Greensburg