I should start by saying I did not take my decision to renounce my citizenship at all lightly. I have lived here since I was four years old. I am a fourth-generation New Yorker on my father’s side. It’s not patriotic hyperbole to insist that I would not be who I am if I hadn’t grown up American. I thrived in New York state’s public schools through 12th grade, and then I also went to college and grad school in the Empire State. During high school, I worked at the West Point Officers’ Club, where I poured champagne for elderly colonels — and once served a canapé to George Bush Sr. I have gloried in more than a dozen of our national parks and lived in six of the lower 48 states, plus Hawaii. Ask me where home is, and I’ll picture the snug, green mountains curving so sweetly down to the Hudson River Valley.

When I decided to leave the United States, I wept.

But I’m also an Australian citizen — on my mother’s side. I was born in Sydney, my first few years lullabied by ocean waves crashing on the cliffs between Coogee Beach and Gordon’s Bay. My father is from New York City, which gave me my joint citizenship, and I came to the United States via London when my young, drug-addicted, and peripatetic Australian mother joined the New York party scene of the early 1980s. While her Instagram feed would have been epic, her parenting sucked. It mostly involved smacking toddler-me around and leaving me locked in an apartment by myself while she did way too much cocaine and hung out at Danceteria.

My mother eventually shifted an abused and frightened me to my father’s mother on the train platform of the Metro-North Hudson Line. In a great stroke of good fortune, my grandma raised me in a loving, nature-filled home in the Hudson Valley. She was easily able to gain custody of me — not just because I had so many bruises, but also because she was an American citizen, I was a citizen through my father, and my mother was not. I ditched my Aussie accent halfway through Montessori school and dedicated myself to being an American kid.

I briefly returned to Australia at age 10 with my grandma to live closer to my father, who had built a successful business there. Seven months into our new life in Sydney, my mother appeared at the door to reclaim custody — she had legal standing under Aussie law. Terrified, I ran and hid in the bathroom. My grandmother and I snuck out of the country illegally, leaving behind a puppy, friends, bike, and new school. When we landed in New York, I felt as if I had escaped back home. To my America. My sanctuary.

Then, as they do, things changed. Years passed, and I became a writer, a gig-economy worker. It’s a precarious existence. I spent three of the past seven years so underemployed that I circled close to poverty. Health care became a constant worry. I have, like many U.S. citizens, had health insurance off and on throughout my adult life, but mostly off. A few years ago, I got kicked in the face by a mule while out riding in the Oregon countryside. I pleaded poverty at the rural health clinic and was offered a butterfly bandage instead of stitches. But bargaining for medical care while drenched in my own blood changed me.

Those of us who want out, permanently and officially, are trapped — and that’s especially true if you’re not rich.

The longer I live here, the more threadbare the social safety net becomes. In my work as a reporter, I have talked to the homeless elderly in New York, the young street kids and families in tent villages in Oakland, Portland, and now Seattle — many of them are working people who still can’t afford a roof over their heads. Plenty need mental or physical health care they’ll never see. It wasn’t unthinkable that with just a couple bad breaks I could wind up joining their ranks. I’m afraid to grow any older here.

When I decided to leave the United States, I wept.