A really long rant... Sorry, it's been festering for awhile
I've lived in the Seattle area for most of the last 23 years, brought here by my 'loving' parents when I was 7, so I didn't get a choice in the matter. For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to leave.
Last year, I managed to get out for 9 months overseas. After coming *home* to a place where I purposely avoid my neighbors so they don't ask me for shit, can hardly make myself get out of bed in fall, winter and spring (BTW, this year we hit a new record for longest period of time spent below 75 degrees!! Now that's something to be proud of) because there's nothing to do anyway in the cold intrusive rain, I mention on FB that I miss _______ (insert country I was in), only to meet a barrage of comments telling me to stop looking outside myself for happiness, 'if you like it so much, maybe you should marry someone from there, so you never have to come back', 'if you can't be happy here, you probably wont be happy anywhere' and so on. I hadn't even mentioned wanting to leave, only that I missed the other country.
Things I miss about the other country:
Respect
Community
Responsiblity
Ownership
Heritage
Progress
Balance
Humility
Real recycling (see responsibility, ownership, progress, balance)
Courtesy
Honor
AMAZING transportation system (not only efficient, cost effective, and convenient, but also clean and safe.)
If you were at the park with your kids, and one fell, someone would actually pick them up and make sure they were okay. If someone noticed another person about to commit a crime, they step in and protect another person.
Sadly there is racism there, but even if they don't like your race, or the country you're from, they will still treat you with respect, courtesy, dignity, and typically step in to protect you or your children from harm, because they are honorable.
I don't find any of those things here. Well, other than the racism, that as others have posted before, festers under a facade of 'liberal' inclusion.
I suppose it's hard to say that any seattleite is 'racist', when it's more 'cliqueist' than anything. If you aren't in their club so to speak, you are nothing. It starts with those who can claim to live IN seattle vs those who live out of Seattle, then narrows to those who jog around green lake, or those who live in Ballard, or the West Seattle crowd, Mercer Island yuppies, and so forth, and amongst those groups, it narrows to smaller cliques, each one thinking it's better than the one down the block.
People who are most homophobic usually have questions about their own sexuality and those who most defend marriage at all costs are often in the worst marriages. I think everyone here is so damn miserable, the only way they know how to try to feel okay is to try to convince themselves they suffer through this misery to have something everyone else wants to have, and to hear someone say they hate this place and want to leave, tells them that what they have sucks and we don't want it, making their misery useless. So they must make traitors and ingrates out of us or admit that they are miserable and hate their lives.
I want out! The trouble is figuring out where to go, since I can't just run off back to the country I visited.