Living abroad for a decade showed me the 11 harsh truths about America

There’s a gift you only get by leaving home for a long stretch. The distance sharpens your view. The contrast makes the quiet things loud.

After a decade abroad—with a camera, a backpack, and a lot of train tickets—I came back to the U.S. with love for what we do well and clarity on what blinds us.

Here are the 11 harsh truths I couldn’t unsee.

1) Health care complexity

In most places I lived, health care felt like a public service. In America, it often feels like a maze where the exit signs keep moving.

You don’t fully appreciate this until you’ve had a sprained ankle handled at a neighborhood clinic overseas for the price of dinner—no mystery bills, no “out-of-network” scavenger hunt, no phone marathons with insurers.

Back home, even the insured can’t predict what a routine visit will cost, which means people delay care or avoid it altogether. That’s not just expensive; it’s corrosive. It trains you to be anxious before you’re even sick.

The harsh truth: when basic care is wrapped in complexity, health becomes a privilege. We can do better than paperwork as a gatekeeper.

2) Work identity

The first question in many U.S. conversations is “So, what do you do?” It’s normal here, but abroad I noticed how rare that opener was. People asked where I’d biked that week, what I was reading, whether the light was good on the old bridge for photos. Work mattered, sure, but it wasn’t the organizing religion.

When work is the primary identity, any wobble at work—layoffs, burnout, a boring quarter—feels like an existential crisis. I’ve mentioned this before, but the more your worth is anchored to a job title, the easier it is to lose yourself when the title changes.

The harsh truth: we confuse productivity with purpose. You are not your role. Your job is a tool, not a personality.

3) Vacation scarcity

The year I learned “bridge day” in Italian (turn a midweek holiday into a long weekend), my American brain broke a little. People used time off like a wellness practice, not a guilty pleasure. They planned around rest the way we plan around meetings.

Back in the States, paid time off is treated like a fragile heirloom—locked up, rationed, sometimes left unused. We post head-down hustle memes and call it admirable. But it’s expensive to grind: creativity shrinks, health slips, families run on fumes.

The harsh truth: we act like rest is earned by exhaustion, not necessary for good work and a good life. If you have PTO, use it. If you’re the boss, normalize it.

4) Car dependency

I love a good road trip. But living in cities where your feet, a bike, or a reliable bus get you nearly everywhere changes your nervous system. You become less tense by default. Errands hop from “task” to “pleasant walk.” Teenagers can navigate their world without begging for a ride.

Here, the car is often the only option. That means every commute is a solo mission, every grocery run requires parking calculus, and pedestrians are treated like glitches in the traffic flow. It also quietly isolates us—we move through our towns in sealed boxes, eyes forward, music up.

The harsh truth: if you can’t get somewhere without a car, your freedom is conditional. Our bodies and neighborhoods pay the price.

5) Tipping sprawl

I worked service jobs in my early twenties, so I respect tipping culture’s roots. But after years in countries where service staff earn livable wages without relying on tips, it was jarring to come home to tip screens popping up for almost every transaction—and a social script that makes “no tip” feel like a moral failure even when you’re ordering at a kiosk.

When tips try to backfill wages, customers become involuntary payroll. Workers shoulder the volatility of shifting norms. And awkwardness floods an interaction that should be simple: here’s your coffee, enjoy your day.

The harsh truth: generosity is wonderful; wage insecurity isn’t. We blur the line constantly, and nobody wins—especially the people doing the work.

6) Portion distortion

As a vegan, I pay attention to what lands on the plate. Abroad, restaurant portions tended to match how your body feels after a meal: energized, not sedated. Back home, the “standard” entrée can be two meals disguised as one, and the default is abundance first, balance later.

There’s nothing wrong with leftovers. The problem is the baseline. When “more” is the constant message, “enough” becomes hard to sense. You eat past fullness because the plate keeps insisting.

The harsh truth: we’ve lost sight of appetite literacy. Food is culture and comfort, yes—but the portion cues around us often drown out our own signals.

7) Loneliness normal

One of my clearest memories from abroad is realizing I knew my neighbors’ schedules simply because our lives overlapped—same tram stops, same market days, same weekly park run. People weren’t necessarily chattier; the infrastructure just put us near each other.

In the U.S., even friendly neighborhoods can feel like parallel universes: garage door up, car in, garage door down. We compensate with more screen time, which offers connection without community. You can have a thousand DMs and still have nobody to water your plants.

The harsh truth: we designed for speed and privacy, then wondered why we feel so alone. Loneliness isn’t a character flaw; it’s a built environment output.

8) Housing precarity

In several countries I lived, long-term renting didn’t carry the same stigma it often does here. More importantly, leases were clearer, tenant rights stronger, and neighborhoods more stable because people weren’t forced to move by surprise hikes or renovictions.

In the U.S., “home” can feel like a moving target. Even solid earners juggle rising rents, bidding wars, and opaque fees. That constant instability has a mental-health tax. You can’t plan a life if your address keeps changing against your will.

The harsh truth: shelter is treated as an asset class first, a human need second. That priorities mismatch ripples through everything—from schools to friendships.

9) Public space neglect

I fell in love with parks overseas that weren’t fancy. They were simply there—and everywhere. Benches faced each other (so humans might actually talk). Playgrounds worked for toddlers and grandparents. Public bathrooms existed and were clean enough to use. Boring miracles.

Back home, too many parks feel like afterthoughts. We underfund libraries, lock bathrooms, and design plazas around “no loitering” signs. Then we wonder why our streets feel tense or why families don’t linger.

The harsh truth: when we treat shared spaces like liabilities, we lose the place where community happens by accident.

10) News polarization

Living abroad taught me to read multiple outlets to triangulate reality. It also showed me how U.S. media incentives push us toward outrage, even when the facts are straightforward. Clicks love conflict. Algorithms amplify extremes. Nuance is hard to monetize.

When you swim in that water, you start mistaking vibes for evidence. The country feels more dangerous than it is in some places, and less dangerous in others. People you disagree with become caricatures, not neighbors.

The harsh truth: we outsource our curiosity to feeds designed for escalation. The antidote is slow information—local reporting, primary sources, and yes, getting outside.

11) Consumer pressure

I’m not anti-stuff. I love a well-made backpack and a camera that fits my hand like a friend. But living in smaller apartments with less storage broke my habit of accumulating “just in case.” Things had to earn their space. Repair shops were on every block. Borrowing was normal.

Here, the gravity pulls toward more—bigger carts, faster shipping, shorter lifespans for the objects we buy. You can feel financially comfortable and still feel behind because the “standard” keeps inflating.

The harsh truth: we call it convenience, but constant consumption is a treadmill. It devours time, attention, and the planet—and rarely delivers the satisfaction we were promised.

So what now?

I don’t write any of this from a pedestal. I love a lot about America: the scale of imagination, the openness to reinvention, the music scenes that raised me. The point isn’t “elsewhere is perfect.” Every place has trade-offs. The point is noticing the water we’re swimming in so we can choose, not drift.

A few practical shifts that helped me after I moved back:

• Design your life for people, not just productivity. Walk when possible. Learn neighbors’ names. Say yes to the picnic table.
• Use rest as a strategic tool. Schedule days off the way you schedule deadlines. Protect them.
• Simplify health where you can. Choose a primary care clinic and stick with it. Ask about cash rates. Keep a running list of questions on your phone.
• Re-learn “enough.” With food, with stuff, with screens. Enough is a moving target; make it explicit.
• Curate your inputs. Diversify news. Unfollow outrage. Read one long piece for every ten short ones.
• Be a public-space friend. Pick up litter. Advocate for bathrooms. Donate to your library. Those are glue moves.

If living abroad taught me anything, it’s this: systems shape behavior. But within any system, micro-choices shape your day. You can build a calmer, kinder life inside a culture that sometimes pushes the other way.

The harshest truth is also the most hopeful one. We built this. Which means we can build better. The question is—what tiny corner will you start with today?