I first moved to Oregon, USA, in August of 2012. I was 27, technically a fully-formed adult, although on the metric of wisdom and openness, I would have scored pretty inadequate. I moved sight unseen, only aware of relatively high crime rates and rainfall. I didn’t care; anywhere would be better than where I was, I thought. And it turned out not to be too far from the truth.
There are some moments in life where everything shifts; nothing is ever the same again. This was one of those moments, a pivot, a before-and-after sketch, a rose-tinted-glass-removing moment. I would never be that 27-year-old again, although she resides well and good deep within me. Silent and integrated. Unsure at times, but largely grounded.
This was a bleak time, though, one of the worst times in my life so far. I was quite literally running away. Running away from a life I won’t hesitate to describe as hell. My parents had found out that I was dating a non-Muslim and threw the biggest tantrum they ever had. How did they find out a carefully managed secret like this? My boundaryless, South Asian mother went snooping around on my desktop computer while I was traveling for work and found a photograph of us kissing 🙂 (I volunteered to travel even more for work after this inciting incident because, as I said before, my life was hellfire.)
My already-minute social life was irrevocably curtailed so much so that I voluntarily refused to go see a good friend moving to Australia because asking my parents for permission was like taking bitter medicine. He still doesn’t speak to me, even though I’ve reached out to him multiple times on social media. I didn’t try explaining my situation to him because I guess there was some shame around having such controlling parents in your late 20s. I managed fintech systems in foreign client sites, but my father picked me up from work parties at 10 pm. On days he felt more generous, he would give me an extra hour, even though my mother would vehemently object to that.
Since I was a kid, my parents had told me that they expected me to marry within the community. My father, for the very first time, slapped me when he found out about my “felony”. He blurted out in wrath, “I will kill you both and hang you in the Battaramulla junction if you continue this nonsense.” (Battaramulla is the suburb we lived in) Coming from a father who practiced a religion that’s known for honor killings, I almost believed him. I wanted to report his threat and abuse to the police and move out of my parents’ house immediately, but my boyfriend discouraged me: “Your father is the police. He knows too many people on the inside. Do you think he will take it well if you report him?” He was used to physical abuse being a “normal” part of the island life.
In some ways, he was right, because I’ve since learned that a lot of women’s complaints are not taken seriously by the local police, regardless of whether the perpetrator knew someone on the inside or not. The curse of being a woman in this world.
He also refused to take any sword-swishing actions like moving in together or getting married. He was prepared to give my parents time to come around and for things to stay as they were until then. We did have a loose plan of moving to the US for our MBAs, but he wasn’t as far along in the application process as I was. So, I left. I’m very good at leaving and will get even better over time.
Those first few months in Oregon were beyond painful and sad; they were disappointing, and I needed to soothe myself from the disloyalty of various parties. But I had decades of experience coping through work. I threw myself into making myself a new home abroad and adapting to a new university system. I went on long walks and started running just for fun. I don’t remember if I cried precariously or abundantly. I didn’t think I would ever go back home to Sri Lanka then, although I have been back a few times since then.
p.s. Although I was never educated at the University of California, San Diego (pictured above), I grieved who I was when I was in grad school when I visited this university on a work trip. Thus, the use of this image.
