leaving on a jet plane
The first airport goodbye I remember is the one I said to my parents, right before I flew to America for the first time. It was 2013; I was twenty, and they had driven me to Heathrow first thing in the morning. I don’t think either one of them was really on board with the trip – I was going to see the person I was dating at the time, who was older and also (crucially) in America, and I’ve learned since then that my mother had a lot of soul-searching conversations with my aunt about how worried she should be. My dad does not really do soul-searching conversations. I think this is why he got angry, over something trivial I don’t really recall, before seeing me off at the entrance to security.
I remember this goodbye because I spent it placating him, and it made me profoundly relieved to be getting away for a while. I’d flown by myself before – I had a pen pal in France for a while, and my parents were thrilled to send me off to Nantes for two weeks on my own – but this was the first time I felt properly alone in transit. It felt good! It felt better than travelling ever had before. Turns out that I’m better at this stuff when I can do it under my own power, without needing to keep a weather eye on anyone else.
I then had to say goodbye to my partner, of course, on the way home. It was the first and only time I’ve actually cried while saying goodbye. I remember that I promised to come back; to date, I have not.
I looked back while taking off my boots in the line for security, and I watched hir walk away to a life I couldn’t stay in any longer. It was a good visit; that’s the worst part, even now. Upstate New York was sweltering under a heatwave, and there were lowkey too many of us in my partner’s small apartment, but I’ve never forgotten the giddy, stupid relief I felt at being where they were at last. I still think about the way I felt when we got onto the highway, after they’d picked me up from the airport. The world felt larger, more full of possibility than before.
After that visit, I went back to university for a final year that nearly killed me – that I’d known would nearly kill me, with the helpless prescience of someone who has already found their limit. We lasted another year after my graduation day before we broke up. That two-week visit was the only time we shared together in person.
I am wary of saying too much about the third goodbye. I didn’t cry. I knew it would be final, and I was relieved. We broke up a week or so later, and I was relieved about that, as well.
My parents didn’t drive me to the airport when I left England. I’d booked an extremely early flight, hoping to minimise my risk of travel delays, and so they hired a taxi driver to take me to Gatwick instead. They’re getting older, is the thing. I have never exactly liked asking them to do things for me, but I couldn’t in good conscience have asked them to drive at that kind of hour anymore.
I couldn’t sleep very much on the drive to the airport, so the driver and I ended up talking for much of the trip. Her daughter had just gone off on holiday someplace warm; when she asked me why I was going to Canada, I joked sleepily that I was going for the cold. Even now, I am hesitant to dig into my actual reasons for wanting to leave the UK; I am never sure when someone is likely to have reservations about my trans identity, or a deep enthusiasm for Brexit.
She was kind, though. When we pulled up at the airport, she helped me wrangle my bags onto a trolley, and she waved me off into the terminal. No mess, no last-minute interpersonal nightmares. The flight was delayed, of course, but it wasn’t for lack of trying on my part.
The last few airport goodbyes have been the ones I’ve said to Isaac. The one I said yesterday, right before security at Halifax Stanfield, is the latest of three. It is not going to be the last.
According to the forum where I’ve built an immigration timeline for the pair of us – which aggregates data from all its users, who update their own timelines as their cases progress – our fiancé visa petition is likely to be processed around August 31, 2023. The US government itself says that we can’t query any delays in this process until late in September of that same year. And that’s just the first step. After that, we will have to wait anywhere between three weeks to three months for our case to be passed on to the American embassy in Montreal. Then I will have to book my interview for as soon as I can. Keep in mind that I need to leave Canada by early May 2024. If the wait times for immigration keep extending – and it is a very real worry that they might – I may have to return to England before I can move to live with my partner, which would make seeing him at all exponentially more of a challenge.
If I think too hard about this, I start crying – simple as that – the way I always try not to cry when we say goodbye at the airport. I don’t want to make it harder on either of us; it’s already more than hard enough. Even when I know when I’m seeing him next (seven weeks from now, for a month-long holiday visit in December and January), it is impossibly hard to leave him, every time.
Because the thing we’re trying to do is so large, and so uncertain, and so completely out of my control. Because I want it anyway, more than I want almost anything. Because I sleep better when we’re together, and I eat better when I’m not alone, and I feel better when I’m moving through the world alongside him. We will get through it, because there’s simply no alternative. I love him, and I would go through anything for that. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. I flatter myself that I have done a fair amount of difficult shit in my life; none of it has been anything like as difficult as this.
I gave myself today off from work, solely for the purpose of being forlorn. Tomorrow I will get back into the rhythm of life by myself; at the weekend I will see friends for a Halloween get-together; next month I will figure out Christmas gifts for my soon-to-be in-laws, and I will write, and I will make an optimistic effort to get back into running. Today, though, I get to hunker down and miss my fiancé. My throw blanket still smells like him. I hope the US government reads this, and hires more goddamn people.
Better news:
We really did have a good visit! We ate a lot of lovely foods, and trundled around several museums, and gazed wistfully at the sea. I also showed him Hacks, a TV show about two horrible women who have spent two seasons failing inexplicably to make out.
I got my Covid booster! It knocked me over for two full days, right before Isaac’s arrival; while the experience was miserable, I do call that perfect timing.
Despite being deeply preoccupied by Isaac visitation, I have still written 10,000 words so far this month.
I have learned, mostly, how to cook ‘eggs in purgatory, puttanesca style.’ Which is to say that I have watched Isaac slicing things and then watched the sliced things cooking in the pan. I can probably replicate that on my own, right?
Halifax is beautiful in the fall. The trees are incandescent red and gold; yesterday morning there was a beautiful mist over the trees in the park. This is a good city, and I am lucky to get to live here.