My heart belongs to Europe, 100%. I’ve been very ill and disabled since childhood, I couldn’t afford my medications in the USA, just one essential medication was 2.000 USD per month.

So that was the primary reason I left. There are others, like:

the human rights violations committed by the American state, domestically and abroad,

and the mass shootings.

and the apparent reluctance to acknowledge, much less prepare for, climate change in some circles.

and the lack of abortion rights.

and how shite the American public education can be, and how expensive private education can be.

It’s possible Trump could get elected POTUS.

Etc, etc., etc. I don’t want to raise my kid there for a plethora of reasons.

I love how dynamic, open-hearted and fun Americans are, and of course the USA contains many natural wonders. I don’t dislike America or Americans at all, this isn’t personal.

But life in Norway is better by pretty much every metric, so I’m staying put here.

I left because I knew I wouldn’t remain rich if I stayed in the USA.

I’ve been disabled since childhood, and even with my dad’s great insurance the medical bills were colossal. And once I graduated college I couldn’t get insurance, COBRA was running out… and one of my essential prescriptions, just one, was TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS A MONTH.

I was skipping essential doctor’s visits and putting myself at real risk of a real medical catastrophe… so I decided to move somewhere my money - a moderate-sized inheritance plus what I had saved modeling - could stretch a bit further.

Best choice of my life. Even not being on the NHS, my prescription costs went from thousands of dollars to ~£220 per month. Still a lot, but way less. And once I was on the NHS they were ~£109 per year.

…I was also totally disgusted by the USA’s many human rights violations, NGL. I’m leery of any society that is cool with torture.

As a professional patient:

Once you have a personal number, the Norwegian system is smooth as silk, it really is brilliant. I’m getting a power chair and a chair lift soon, along with a bunch of consults and a MRI (there is an imaging facility in the mall, bloody amazing).

Prior to having a personal number, getting the healthcare I needed was a huge bitch - I had to go the ER every month for my prescriptions and docs who don’t know you hate writing scripts for fentanyl - but the system was blind to my existence, so I can’t hate.

The NHS was easily dealt with, at least for me.

TBH the USA’s system has been both the most expensive and the most fragmented, but I may have just gotten lucky with the others.

Julie Powell - I wouldn’t call her a visionary, but I liked her work quite a bit. It was clear in her second book that she was a very troubled person, and it is a real shame she died so young.

Ditto Elizabeth Wurtzel, who - in my opinion - was a huge talent.

I read a lot of memoirs, though, and people very rarely write happy ones. One of my favourites is Her Last Death by Susanna Sonnenberg - if I do everything her mother didn’t (and vice versa) I know I will be a good mother.

What are you afraid of missing out on, OP?

I will say you’ve not been there long, and (for me) the five-month mark is the hardest time of a relocation. I am dazzled by a new environment at first, but that fades, and then I see all of the downsides and miss my old home and friends desperately.

If you keep going, you will very likely find way to make a life for yourself in Canada.

But there is no shame in turning back, and TBH that seems to be what you want, understandably.

I feel this way whenever I read something by Cormac McCarthy. His words are so beautiful, and the worlds he creates are so ugly…

Elfquest is a series of graphic novels, a fantasy story about a community of elves and other fictional species who struggle to survive and coexist on a primitive Earth-like planet with two moons.

My older brother was reading them, so I started them as well, and they really changed by worldview for the better. The artwork is really, really beautiful, and the idea of a group of elves who commune with wolves to survive in an alien environment is such a cool idea. The books made me feel transported to another, wilder place.

There are no villains in these books, at least not in the standard sense. Some characters do horrible things, but because they are flawed, misunderstood, traumatised or misguided. The humans who torture and kill elves have their reasons. The trolls, who enslave rock-shaper elves, have their reasons. Some elves want to subjugate their own kind and annihilate elves with ‘mixed blood’, and even they have their reasons. Understanding that made me better understand the world I live in. and made me more empathetic.

If anyone wants to read these books, the creators have put most of the series online for free.