About the links I posted yesterday.

People ask me if I would ever move back to America to live permanently. The answer is: probably not.

Why?

Well, because the place is terrifying. It’s flow from conservative to liberal and back again with no middle ground and very little notice scares the shit out of me.

Living in Northern Ireland is steady. We are a conservative, Christian country where people still throw petrol bombs.

Yeah. It can be physically scary. But politically? It’s going nowhere.

Abortion is illegal. It always will be.

We had to put my son’s religion on his school application, even though his school is integrated and we don’t, technically, have a religion. That field on the app will never disappear.

Northern Ireland isn’t going to suddenly become non-sectarian. It will matter, for centuries, if not forever, what religion you are, even if you have friends on both sides of the Peace Line. People care.

What Wendy Davis did was amazing. She stood up to the rich white majority of probably the richest whitest state in the union. And she won. And she continues to win as the Governer fires silos of hate at her.

Something similar will never happen here. Not in my lifetime. Not in my son’s. Even though we do have female politicians.

And as much as I hate a lot of stuff here, as much as it goes against my feminist ideals and my own wants and needs, it’s sort of comforting. The lack of change, the knowledge that it will always matter what religion you are or in what part of Belfast you live.

I hate change. And I’ve found the perfect country to live in to never have to worry about things changing.

This all probably sounds defeated and cynical and probably a cop out.

It all probably is.

Feel free to prove me wrong Northern Ireland. I’d be happy to eat my words.

But I am still not moving back to the US any time soon.

That place terrifies me.