Are You the Drama?
What Happens When the Baggage Isn’t the Suitcase
“Am I the Drama?” Cardi B’s album title cuts deeper than pop provocation. It exposes a fundamental human truth: we are often the architects of our own conflicts. And if that’s the case, no amount of geographic distance can outrun the problems we carry within ourselves. This reckoning is playing out in expat communities worldwide, forcing uncomfortable conversations about what we really carry with us when we move abroad.
In this era of political exhaustion, rising costs, and digital mobility, thousands of Americans are moving abroad in search of a new beginning. The allure is obvious: cheaper healthcare, walkable streets, maybe even a gentler pace of life. But here’s the catch: you can book a flight. You can buy a condo. You can pack your things. What you cannot do is escape yourself.
The reasons for leaving the U.S., pile high and heavy. Healthcare alone is crushing: the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services report that the average American spends $12,914 a year on it, compared to just $5,736 in Portugal, according to OECD data. Housing offers no relief either. Median home prices in U.S. cities have now climbed above $400,000, the National Association of Realtors confirms. Add in the political polarization, tripled tuition since the 1980s, and a remote work boom that makes moving feasible for millions, and it is no wonder so many people are looking for the door.
By 2023, nearly nine million Americans were already living abroad, according to the Association of Americans Resident Overseas. The U.S. Treasury’s Federal Register shows more than 4,600 people formally renounced citizenship that year, a 20 percent jump from 2022. And after the 2024 election, Google Trends recorded a 500 percent spike in searches for “how to move to Portugal.” Searches for “relocating to Canada” shot up 1,200 percent.
This isn’t wanderlust. It’s an exodus. But exodus begs the harder question: what are people actually running toward, and what are they dragging with them?
Robert’s Rude Awakening: A Cautionary Tale for Expats
Some time ago, my friend Robert called me from his balcony in Mexico, overlooking the turquoise ocean, his voice quivering with disbelief. Just months earlier he had been euphoric, signing papers on the beachfront condo he thought would change everything. He pictured mornings with coffee and sea breezes and neighbors who shared his dream of starting fresh. The building, filled mostly with American expats, seemed like a safety net for his first international leap. “I thought I’d found my tribe,” he shared.
What he found instead was a replica of everything toxic he’d left behind. Neighbors complained loudly about Mexican staff being “too slow.” Building meetings devolved into English-only demands. The same cultural superiority that had soured his hometown social circles had simply relocated to a more scenic backdrop. Robert, a gay man who had struggled with acceptance in conservative communities back home, thought Mexico might offer him the freedom he’d been seeking. The cruel irony? The homophobia he encountered didn’t come from local Mexicans. It came from his fellow American expats, the very people who insisted they’d also relocated for “freedom.”
“I realized I hadn’t moved to Mexico,” Robert confessed during that call. “I moved to a gated community that happened to be in Mexico.”
Robert’s experience reveals an uncomfortable truth: you can traverse continents but you cannot outrun yourself. The problems that poison one paradise have an uncanny ability to resurface in the next.
The Baggage We Carry: When Expat Life Repeats Old Patterns
Scroll any expat forum and the patterns reveal themselves. A newcomer asks a question about visas or schools. The responses spiral into complaints, insults, sometimes outright xenophobia. The very toxicity people claim to be escaping reappears, only now projected onto cobblestoned streets in Lisbon or beach towns in Costa Rica.
Dr. Elena Rodriguez of Universidad Carlos III in Madrid has studied these communities. “We’re seeing American expat clusters replicate the worst aspects of American suburbia,” she observes. “Parallel societies that resist integration while criticizing locals for not bending to their expectations.”
In other words: the drama doesn’t vanish. It migrates.
Exporting the First Amendment: The Communication Clash
One of the sharpest cultural clashes abroad comes from America’s peculiar reading of free speech. Newsflash: your First Amendment rights will not clear customs in your new country. At home, the First Amendment protects against government restriction, not social consequence. But many Americans forget that second part.
Abroad, the misunderstanding is glaring. A casual complaint about “lazy” officials or “backwards” systems might feel like harmless venting. Instead, it can sour visa applications, harm business prospects, and fracture relationships with neighbors.
Portuguese immigration lawyer António Silva has seen it repeatedly. “American clients are genuinely shocked when their public criticism damages their standing in the community,” he explains. “They do not realize that words carry consequences.”
The numbers back him up. A 2023 International Community Foundation survey found that 67 percent of long-term American expats struggled early on with integration. The biggest barrier wasn’t language fluency but communication style. Translation: tone matters more than verb conjugation.
The unglamorous truth? Learning when not to speak can be harder than mastering any foreign language.
Belonging Is Not Automatic: The Price of Integration
Integration is not a courtesy extended to newcomers. It is the price of genuine belonging. Psychologists describe the key ingredient as “cultural humility” – the willingness to arrive in a country as a student rather than a teacher.
Governments are noticing. Portugal, Mexico, and Costa Rica have all started building integration requirements into their visa processes because too many Americans remain cultural outsiders. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank estimate that American expats contribute about $87 billion annually to global economies. But here’s the kicker: International Community Foundation research shows that when expats genuinely engage with local life, business creation and civic participation climb by nearly 40 percent.
The math is simple. Tourists consume. Neighbors contribute. And locals can tell the difference.
Packing Bags, Unpacking Yourself: The Real Journey
Moving abroad is a form of personal archaeology. Strip away familiar scaffolding – your political ecosystem, your routines, your cultural defaults – and what remains is raw identity.
The expats who thrive are those who practice what researchers call “adaptive identity flexibility.” They keep their core values but release the behaviors that no longer serve them. They listen more than they speak. They give back as much as they take in. Slowly, they are changed by the countries they enter.
One man only found peace after leaving his American enclave and opening himself to local life. The revelation was unsparing: his problems weren’t geographical. They were personal.
The Mirror Moment: Are You the Drama?
The question cuts to the bone: Are you chasing something better or just running from yourself? Will you arrive as someone ready to learn or as another demanding the world accommodate your expectations?
The world has space for expats who arrive with curiosity, skills, and respect. What it does not need is another colony of grievances dressed up in new scenery.
Before you buy that ticket, ask yourself the question Cardi B posed. If every country feels like the place you left, maybe the problem is not the world.
Maybe, just maybe, you are the drama.