putting my queer shoulder to the wheel
Today, Isaac filed the first tranche of documentation required for my visa application.
Yesterday, probably, by the time I publish this. I am writing this at 11pm because my brain is climbing five simultaneous walls. I have complicated feelings about the immigration process which I am reluctant to write about in public (this is public), in case they undermine my sincere effort to build a life with the only person I think I could ever want to marry. Not feeling able to write about it isn’t helping. I’m also very much waiting for my ESTA to be approved, so I can actually see Isaac as planned in August, and that is not helping, either.
Part of being in a new country and trying to build a life is that I am scared, at least a little bit, all the time. I now get to be differently scared all the time, on top of the previous fears, for exciting new reasons! And all of those reasons are entirely outside my control. Battle royale: my desire to embrace the infinite possibilities of my finite existence on this planet vs my fucked-up brain chemistry (look at it. it’s got anxiety). Stay tuned!!
When I applied to come to Canada in the first instance, I didn’t think it would happen. Honestly, I barely remember filling in the form. It was something I did on a slow summer afternoon at the office, a Brexit-powered paranoia whim that I genuinely thought would be crushed beneath the wheel of bureaucracy. It wasn’t really meant to turn into a full-blown Plan.
It did happen, obviously, and remarkably soon after I submitted the form. Without really trying, I had lucked into the perfect moment to submit an International Experience Canada Working Holiday Visa application — right at the point in the cycle where they were throwing out invitations to send in personal info for further consideration. Sometimes it’s a little disheartening, how much of my life amounts to things I did without really trying. The rest of the time, I know better than to disparage my obvious possession of very good luck.
At the Canadian border, the guy who processed me took one look at my paperwork and remarked that the pandemic must have really knocked me sideways. I agreed at the time, because I was talking to a border guard and I was incredibly, powerfully weary; I would have agreed with basically anything this man said. I don’t know if I agree with hindsight. Sure, it was miserable being stuck in the UK in a state of limbo for two years; but there is no denying that the temporary visa happened to me incredibly quickly, and in 2020, I wasn’t ready to go. Even if the whole world hadn’t stalled to a halt on account of a plague which emphatically did not respect international borders, I would not have made the most of the trip if I’d left when I originally meant to leave.
What the pandemic gave me, aside from a near-breakdown experience and a horrific missed opportunity, was time to reflect. I didn’t hurtle out of England at incredible and potentially dangerous speeds in 2020, because I couldn’t. By the time 2022 caught up with me, I knew what I wanted to do with my time in Canada; I knew how I was going to support myself, where I was going to live, what I wanted to try to do. And now I have two years to do it, probably, before I pull up my new and shallow roots and go through it all again.
The fiancé visa is harder on me, thus far, because I want it.
It isn’t something I can apply for on the spur of the moment while it’s hot outside and the news is bad. (Joke’s on me! The news is always bad.) It isn’t a without-really-trying thing. I can’t trick myself into pretending I don’t want it, so I can play it cool and not worry overmuch while it happens on its own in the background. I have to work for it, and want it, and know all of the things that could go wrong with it, and try really hard anyway, and know that it might not happen.
(In this respect, it’s wretchedly like trying to publish a goddamn book.)
It’s the Anne Carson problem. It’s being powerless before an immense bureaucratic machine that could very easily look at your feelings (your awful vulnerable naked little feelings!) and decide not to give a shit. The fact that it might very well be fine changes nothing. I still have to go through the motions of emotional exposure, and I have to do it for a wait time of well over a year. The other thing the pandemic has given me: heinous visa processing backlogs, literally everywhere I turn.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m doing it anyway. There is simply no alternative; I want to marry Isaac, and live with him, and wake up and see him first thing every morning. If I want that, then I have to go through this, and I have decided that it’s worth it. It would be worth just about anything.
But it’s a lot, and it’s going to remain a lot for a while. Sorry in advance, I guess.
Happier news! I turned 29 late last week, and I celebrated with a really nice local burger. My shipping box is apparently due to arrive on Friday, though I will believe it when I see it; I am desperately excited to be able to crochet again. I’ve been feeding myself acceptably well, despite my well-documented anxiety about cooking; I have made omelettes and fried eggs and pieced together American-style grilled cheese sandwiches, and I have been getting acceptably good at making little salads, too. Today my adoptive Canadian mother Nancy took me out to lunch as a late birthday treat, which was incredibly generous given that she has known me for almost exactly a month. Manuscript revisions continue apace; I’ve done all the major structural stuff, at least. Also, like — we sent our fiancé visa paperwork off today. Underneath all the stress, that’s incredibly happy news. Future Waverly is already living with the love of their life in San Francisco, and all I can do is live up to their aspirational example.
(Also, hot damn, it’s still today. Imagine that.)