It’s official: We are in the throws of a wet, hot American summer. It’s hard not to feel a sense of patriotism during the summer months because between Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day, we have a holiday celebrating American-ness about every 4 to 6 weeks.

I am proud to be an American. That’s not to say that I am blissfully ignorant of our many faults. America, in a sense, is a flawed protagonist: The Don Draper. The Great Gatsby. The Dr. Faustus. The Icarus with wax wings that we can’t wait to melt because we love blowing stuff up.

This is a t-shirt I bought from LOLmart. Bud Light and denim cutoffs not included.

We are a nation desperately clinging to a frontier spirit with tactics which at sometimes are downright Machiavellian.

I remember mornings at Windermere Elementary School where instead of the underwhelming Star Spangled Banner, they would play “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood. You want to know how to get a room of 25 8-year-olds completely amped? Play “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood. If you had given us a gallon of Pepsi and put then put us at a Wiggles concert, you would have not see such fervor.

We miss those times, in a way, when our devotion for our great country is pure and untainted. Growing up, we are given this whimsical image of what America is: The colonialists who fought for freedom against a tyrannical, oppressive government. This image is inevitably shattered when we learn we were just attempting to avoid paying taxes on the French and Indian War, which resulted in a resounding “WTF?” from the British.

When I was 21, I rode on a plane from California to Florida and was fortunate enough to have a window seat. What proceeded in front of my eyes was a geological metamorphosis: The hills of California, the majestic peaks of the Rockies, the expansive Great Plains, and the lush forests of the Southeast. You realize America is just as diverse in our population as we are in our geographical features.

And that’s when the controversy sets in.

Different people have different needs.

Freedom means different things to different people. To some, it means freedom from government oppression. To others, it means the freedom to be left alone.

For a country founded as a result of escaping intolerance, we are not really all that tolerant. To put it mildly, we weren’t very nice to black people. We weren’t very nice to people of color in general. Want to learn something depressing? According to A People’s History of the United States, 75 million Native Americans lived in the continental United States before the time of Columbus. Now it’s closer to 5 million.

We’ve marginalized the Native American population to such an extent, their story is barely even being told. The narrative between whites and blacks is still very active, though far from resolved, especially as seen from someone who lives in the South like myself. The fact we have a black president intensifies this narrative. And in addition, the controversy behind undocumented workers/illegal immigrants from Mexico and Latin America continues to be a point of national contention. Also, if you’re gay, Muslim, or disabled…well, you already know.

For a country built for people with differences, we aren’t very nice to people who are actually different. So how do we all play nice in the sandbox?

At the risk of oversimplification, I want to say as in many dysfunctional relationships, you get through it. If you think your spouse or significant other is perfect, you’re wrong. No one is. Neither is America. You have to collectively come to terms with the past, which we as a country have not, and move on to make something even better.

As a country, we are extremely emotional. We feel deeply about our causes, whether it is religion or the environment or equality or access to medical coverage. Every controversy is met with people who believe in the American spirit in the mindset that your opinions count because this country is made not by oppressive dictators, but by the people. For the people, by the people, if we are being specific.

Like many people growing up in America, America itself has had a bad childhood. How do we make sense of it all so that we can move on? Our beacon of hope in the distance is the idea of what America is and what it can be. It’s the Americans who discovered the frontier, who built the first computer. It’s the spirit of brotherhood that emerged from the aftermath of 9/11, the day we all became New Yorkers. It’s because even on the doorstep of economic and political meltdown, we still think we’re the baddest mothers in the game.

Are our problems complex? Hell, yeah. Can we get through it? I think we can. We may have to evolve, but America, particularly the American Spirit, has the power to transcend and triumph.