How I Became an Expat / White Refugee - Why I traded Australia "the lucky country" for "scary" Mexico. Exclusive to STEEMIT By Elissa Hawke

I didn´t even know I was doing it.

I wasnt even sure I would like Mexico, thought it would be too American.
I was on a mission to get to Tikal pyramids in Guatemala, it was my first time travelling alone outside Australia, and I figured Mexico would be a gentle way to ease me into the espanglish and attune my belly to beans and rice.

Yeah right. More like margaritas and salsa

First time in Cancun for me, flying in over the jungles, the azure seas, the heat when I landed- heaven on earth. The heat just rested against me and I felt safe for a start.
When I say "heat" I dont mean Mexican cops, (theyre worse than the criminals, well, all cops are at a philosophical level), just the warmth relaxed me to my bones after freezing my arse off in San Fran and L.A "springtime". Brrrrr

This is Pure. Hot. Blisss

As I started to walk the city I noticed a white lady in the supermarket. She had a cart for a family, not shopping like a tourist. I wondered how she came to live here.

The ruins at Tulum

In Tulum I saw a white lady who owned a shop! She sold coconut oils and beauty suppplies, health tonics. She was amazing! I asked her questions for an hour... how did you learn to live here, make business, create such a nice setup. To me it was like magic watching someone from another country just work their way into the tapestry of such a different community.
She married a mexican and had a baby and was happy even through the difficulty of being a long way from her home and family in the UK.

The magical jungle pyramids of Palenque

I moved through the mountains, jungle pyramids at Palenque, the colonial town San Cristobal de las Casas, then over rivers into Guatemala. I was glad I had had some happy time in tourist friendly Mexico as in Guatemala City the guard at the bus station wouldnt let me outside for a ciggarette, he said a car would stop and kidnap me.
I´ve had worse offers.

As I headed back through Belize I wondered how I could extend my trip. I had another month planned in the USA so I spent all that month in Tulum and Playa Del Carmen. then I postponed it another 11 months.

I had found another friend in Tulum from the UK, who was talking about staying on in Mexico.
She dreamed of a Mexican man and a half Mexican babe and she became blessed. Life blossoms.
We drank much tea and discussed many business ideas. We started out small, both on tourist visas. We dreamed of a recycled bookstore, recycled clothes. We made cheese and salad rolls and cycled around and tried to sell them on the beach.
We sold about two, ate about two each and fed some to dogs. We both ended up working in hostels.

One weekend she got me to visit her on this little isla I had overlooked.
Isla Mujeres. Womens Island.

When i first arrived I felt stifled, it felt hokey and small, but I was just stuck in the 4 blocks of downtown tourism. I went to the hostel to find my friend.
She told me she was camping, turns out she didnt actually have a tent, just a sheet on the sand under a palm tree. I set up my sarong next to hers and walked out to the beach behind the hostel. I sat there the only one on this precious little white coral beach and felt this was going to be a special place for me.

After a few weeks I had a job at the hostel teaching yoga for my rent and had started massaging in a little spa on the sand to pay for my food and fun. Yessss! I was getting self sufficient in another country! Even without enough Spanish I could find a way.
Sure I was earning $12 an hour when in Australia I could earn ten times that amount.

Money was not the object.

Freedom was.

I worked in bars, cafes, massaged, managed spas, cooked, managed property, many jobs whatever is around and whoever is asking

All I care about is getting more coming in than is going out, on my own terms. being myself.

You have to build a wide range of skillsets to feel confident you can survive in this world and strive for freedom.
I am thankful I knew from a young age I wanted to be self employed.

I didnt want to pay tax where i could avoid it as I believe witholding money energy from the governments is one of the most meaningful ways we can protest/cease/starve these middlemen for the elitist warmongers.

With Australia as USAs 52nd state I have long been ashamed to participate with my financial energy in their continual insanity.
Yes its lovely to have the garbage collected, but we can look after ourselves if it means we can STOP THE BOMBS and disarm the plunderous military attack dogs.

So I have had a few jaunts around since leaving Australia six years ago. Lived in Peru Panama, Costa Rica, Spain, Bosnia and London for a few months each, travelled through a few other countries and lived in several parts of Mexico. Puerto Escondido, Mazunte, Isla Holbox, Tulum, Playa, and now I´ve been back on this island again for the last year.
Im more and more happy and comfortable. This is a wonderful place to make a home for the long term, but I have no plans. Im ready to move on a whim. I have a truckload of belongings now but I can downsize to a suitcase anyday.
There are a lot more places Id like to cast an eye over. A thousand places I want to revisit.

I have never liked the word expat. It reminds me of drunk embarrassments in far flung places. Ugly people trampling on a culture, not immersing and appreciating.

Im not one of those who says "If you want to live here you have to learn our laws, and our ways and speak our language". I am happy for people to travel wherever they can get themselves and live their whole lives immersed in their own culture or speak only their own language if that is where their interests lie.
As an anarchist I am against borders, naturally.

Language is a good bridge into the deep souls of others, but I also enjoy the closeness required, in the silence passing between those who cannot use words, only charades or eye language.
We all need to learn to communicate with everyone without language.
Telepathy will probably take off before google translate works.

So here I find myself. An expat. Except I was never really patriotic.

i really am more of a white ´fugee escaping the madness and evil insanity of my religion, my cult, my statist nutbag "country" corpornation that every other person just thinks is juuust fine.
I probably am a drunken embarrassment on occasion. Thats what you get for pointing the bone and $2 margaritas.

The thing I never premonisced, (not a word but should be) the thing I didnt know that I knew, when I bought my three month round trip ticket, was that I wanted to go on a really biiiiiiig trip.
I wanted to fly and see how long I could stay up. Until maybe, I could learn how to grow off the plantation for good.

Most people dont feel they have the option to pick up their life and plonk it half way round the world mid life. Most have kids or jobs or mortgages or other such fanciful notions which have never stopped any of the families or working travellers I meet, with mortgages, on the bus, in the market at the beach, on the volcano. Let someone else pay off your prison and go trekking $15 a night while your legs still work.

I had nothing to lose. Partly in a Baton Rouge kind of way.
Partly in a "Im so sad at the sickening things all these armies do, I want to die if I cannot stop participating."

Most people just think its useless to complain, to try. I wish they would all say more.

For me it was etched in a thick worry line right over my third eye.
I had the strain on my face of a 60 year old woman as a teenager, so distressed was I to feel ensnared in such a cystem.

Decades later, I noticed the other day, this central line is softer.
Where the deep groove used to slice between my eyes now its just a shallow softened wisp.

No its not botox.

Its freedom.

This is a very small but significant thing.

Sometimes I feel too sensitive for this world.
I feel better for the small ways my unconventional living allows me to starve the beast most of my energies these days.
Its a tiny thing, and certainly no real loss for them. What it is, is a win for humanity.

If she can, I can, you can- he can.

Dont tell me they dont have enough money for schools and hospitals because I withold my energies. Please do your research.

There is an incredible deep peace in getting off your own plantation. Youre never sure how long it can last. Every year is a little trophy

It might not make sense at first, make take a few years to develop into a feeling you can recognise and describe.
It is a feeling that, where you are, youre invisible, not harvestable as immediately as a native.
And as for your own government, over there.... sure, they can still kill you if you prick them enough, but they´d have to move straight to killing as they cant pull all their petty tricks on one so out of grabbing distance.

When youre on your birth plantation just performing minor misdemeanors (like I allegedly was ; ) or, heaven forbid, speaking truth to power- you have years of humbug and then death... fines, court costs, tolls, endless offers to contract in the letterbox, sheriff visits, then swat teams to bat off before they kill you.

Too much mucking around.

You literally begin to feel the peace in the space by the way you can reappraise what you were in from afar.

You can more freely call it as you see it, without censoring yourself in subconscious ways you have now become conscious of.

You can see how it would never have appeared to you like this without not just distance, but .. . t i m e.

You dont feel the need for patriotic self congratulation. You see your true birthright.
Your earthling self.

We are all refugees from the state seeking nature.

Today, Im teaching hatha yoga, paddleboard yoga, massaging, hosting juice detox retreats AND making money on steemit !! : D
http://el3767.wixsite.com/islamassageretreats/home-1

Im making a living disinterested in money as security.
I have shunned it often in preference for learning faith in the great unknowing

I am being myself. Whatever that is. Every day. All day. Say what I want to say. Think how I want to think. Wear what I want to wear. It shouldnt be so rare

One day when I may go and live back upon the land of my birth I will hope to do it on my terms.
When I have learned their legalese language well enough that I may uningratiate myself from their slavery bonds.

When I can be in it but not of it.

I love to go back for visits and holidays but to ever live back on the plantation.. . .I just need to get myself to a stage that I can explain all this to anyone, peaceably, while they may be attempting to extort me, taser me, kidnap or kill me, all with state backing.

While the people cheer.

In other words, Im waiting til I turn into Jesus