ARRRGH!!!

Oh where to begin. Let me update ya’ll on my current situation. My lawyer informed me that my husband’s application to change my status has been seating at my local immigration office since August 2009, Yeah, that long! That’s right, my future, in the hands of clerks at an office that sits only five miles away from me.

This Sunday I will be celebrating my two years anniversary. DH and I had plans of going out of town like we did last year to celebrate our first, but we are trying to save money and pay debts and all those pesky things that get in the way of being romantic. They don’t tell you those things when you read romance novels. They don’t tell you about the annoying traits that will make you want to kill your DH, or the disgusting things one has to witness when sharing a bathroom, or how the day to day life gets in the way of simply wanting to enjoy one’s marriage. They don’t tell you that the processes you have seen take only six months in your case will last 2 years with no solution looming in the future and putting a stall on your plans for life. Going to school, getting a job I enjoy, traveling, getting a license, getting a car, buying a house.

The INS is holding my future hostage, my plans, my dreams for tomorrow, the things I want to do, the things I want to become, they are all being held in the inexorable grasp of a governmental agency that apparently does not know what to do with me and has no rush in finding out. I am being held hostage and it seems to be just for their amusement. If they asked for some sort of ransom I am sure DH and I could come up with something, but I think they perversely enjoy making me wait, wait and wait.

I have no criminal records, speak perfect English, have not once received help from the government, I am young, healthy and able to work, willing to go to school, smart. Why exactly is the INS so against me? I sound wonderful on paper, hell if I were my own country I would want all my residents to be like me (modesty’s obviously not my forte).

Even though I talk about Canada and Europe every time I feel frustrated with my situation the truth is I don’t want to move. I want to stay in the U.S. I don’t want to uproot myself once more and go through all this process again. I also want to tear my hair out, gnaw my arm off and just give up.

I hear people telling me oh you are so strong, so determined. I am neither. It’s sheer and simple stubbornness. Well, it’s 50% stubbornness and 50% laziness. I am so tired I cannot imagine myself picking up and leaving after I have been here for nine years, almost a decade of my life as an unwanted guest. That’s enough to damage anyone’s self steam. When does it stop? When do they decide I am worth noticing? Do they care that my life has been in limbo for the past two years? The answers are, probably never, never and no.

It won’t stop, they are never going to think any immigrant is worth noticing and no, they don’t care about the past two years of my life or what is doing to my marriage and my psyche.

So when does one truly give up? I have dreams of saying Fuck Off! Flip them off and walk away to Europe where I become a blogging sensation, then an acclaimed writer and then Oprah would want to interview me and I would be like, sorry your country didn’t want me, now I don’t want it!

Sigh. Such petty dreams.

That’s the thing, like a fool who goes to her friends to complain about her boyfriend who cheats and then goes back to him; I will probably remain here until I am old and wrinkled. I will be waiting for them, counting my days, my weeks, my months and years for a reply. Waiting for that stupid official looking letter where they say “you will be interviewed on such and such date”.

Not only do I have to go through the humiliating process of explaining that yes, this is really my husband, yes we are really fucking, yes, he is the man I chose. No, not because of papers, no, I sleep on the left side of the bed; I don’t know his favorite color. Maybe ten years from now when I am comfortable in my lack of status they will say, sorry after ten years reviewing your case we have decided your request has been denied, you have 90 days to put your affairs in order and leave the country (which has happened to people here, I’m not making that shit up).

Argh!

Hopefully I will have a nicer post for tomorrow.