♫ O CANADA! ♫

Maybe Canada will want me.

That’s all I could think about when the whole Canada vs. U.S.A hockey band wagon started. Suddenly everyone in Facebook was talking about kicking Canadian ass and most of them didn’t even know how to call the disk they hit with the sticks (I learned it’s called a puck).

As a U.S.A “resident” (I use the term loosely since the U.S.A doesn’t really want me here and I am at the moment merely an uninvited guest) I felt I should root for them to win. I wanted them to win the figure ice skating competition and the skiing and all the other events that I have no care for, like curling. But once it came to a face to face competition between the place I call home and the place that seems more and more apparent will be my home in the future, I felt somewhat divided.

In almost two months I will reach my 8th anniversary in the country. Almost half the amount of time I lived in Venezuela. I am not really Venezuelan, I am not really Colombian since I lived there only for 3 years and I am not a U.S. anything. I am homeless, landless, kind of like Jewish people, without a country to call their own, sans all the tragic history.

My lawyer told me that I should not despair, that there are people who had been in the country without a legal status for 15, 20, 30 years and the funny thing she meant it as an encouragement! All I could hear was, “You could have 22 more years of this” and believe me, I love this country, I love this place and the people I’ve been lucky to meet and call friends, but I do not love it enough to beg and crawl for 22 more years.

Maybe there is a reason why the man in the sky does not want me here; maybe there is some sort of fate, some sort of path I have to follow that does not involve the land of the free and home of the brave.

I never thought this would happen but I am actually indifferent about my fate. I am indifferent about what will happen. There is absolutely nothing I can do to change it and I can either go crazy with the helplessness or I ignore it and let the chips where they may.

I realized yesterday that I am all alone in this. No matter who will be affected by my removal, husband, family, friends, the reality is it involves just me, only me, yours truly alone. I would be the one sitting in some cell if they were to deport me, I would be the one who would be kicked out of here like a criminal. I guess I would go through with it with my chin up and my nose in the air and with all the dignity I could muster, but what shred of dignity can you hold onto when you are wearing a jumper in neon orange and are being herded into a plane with equally unfortunate people clad in the same ugly orange that does not benefit anyone’s complexion?

It is lonely business indeed. Like death. People want to not die alone, have someone there, but death is lonely, it involved one person and one person alone, nobody else goes with you, it affects only the person dying. No support will make a difference.

Depressing shit if you ask me. But like I said I am feeling beyond fear, beyond depression, as if it was happening to someone else and not me. I feel unconnected, watching it happen, watching affect my life but also if I was floating ahead watching while this happens to my person.

So what if they do kick me out? What if my process hits one more of the thousands of snags it keeps hitting? What if I end up back in Venezuela with no money, no prospects and no wish of being there anymore? What if I lose the one home I have known for almost a decade?

I don’t know. I have tried my best. I have done all I can, I can be accused of many things, but never that I didn’t tried hard. There is nothing else for me to do but await my fate and go with flow.

It is scary at times, when I feel like some little speck of dirt in a raging river, being carted along for a ride outside of my control, not knowing where I’ll end up and without any hands or place to hold onto, no haven to hide into and nothing to lean on.

I guess all I can do is concentrate on the good things that may come from me not being here. Maybe I was never supposed to be here in the first place. Maybe I don’t belong yet because I was never meant to belong here. Maybe I have been forcing a square peg in a round hole.

Who knows, there’s nothing I can do but wait and see.

ONCE MORE OUT OF MY HANDS

So yesterday we woke up at five am to be able to be in Miami at 9. I don’t live four hours away from Miami but the traffic as soon as you hit the city is so damn slow that last time we went we sat in the highway for an hour and got to my lawyer’s office so late we had to wait until he had another opening and I almost peed my pants in the car stuck in traffic.

We showed up to my lawyer’s office and sat down with the paralegal to review all the paperwork we had to give them to prove to them our marriage is not a sham. So we went through, marriage certificates, emails, phone records, deeds, life insurance, health insurance, affidavits from friends and family stating they believe our wedding to be a real one and have now to pay another $1,010 to pay for my residency application which could be denied of course but that needs to be sent nonetheless.

As I sat there, trying to remember how many bloody times I have been in that office for the past eight years, my lawyer made a quick appearance and told the paralegal to submit everything at the same time and not give the immigrations agent a chance to hold onto anything to get me out of the country.

Apparently one my lawyer’s clients showed up to his interview thinking he was going to be questioned about his marriage and instead was put into detention and deported out of the country.

Poor Dear Husband, who no matter how often I tell him that is a possibility seems to be in denial of what could happen to me, had a horrified look on his face.

I don’t live in constant fear of being deported. I think there are worse things that could happen as long as everyone I love is healthy and alive anything else to me is small potatoes. But the idea of being detained for months until they can fill an airplane and send me to Colombia fills me with anger. Anger that they would dare to hold me like a criminal, anger that I would have to sit on a cell with a bunch of strangers while we await someone else to decide on our future. I never came to this country illegally so the fact that they would treat me like I broke the law when I haven’t even jaywalked in my life pisses me off.

The process is underway and once more things are out of my hands. For someone who likes to be in control, knowing that my future doesn’t depend on me makes me antsy.

Sometimes I want to fight and claw my way in here and others I realized I’ve been here for so long trying to do things right and still it doesn’t go my way. I sometimes feel like quitting and moving away and that’s it. I have been holding on for so long to the dream of staying here that my fingers hurt and I am close to not giving a damn anymore.

Australia is starting to sound awesome, Canada, who doesn’t like Canadians? I think I could pick up again and start all over but it all seems so unfair to poor Dear Husband who never asked for any of this.

He seems to like the idea of moving away when all I want it’s a little stability, a semblance of normalcy in this crazy life of mine.

We’ll see.

THE INEXORABLE PULL OF RESPONSIBILITY

I wish I had coined the phrase since it seems to describe my very existence. I am, it seems, trapped by a sucking, drowning, black-hole of responsibility. There are, I know, people who seem free of such a crippling emotion, because that is what responsibility is, an emotion. A feeling in the pit of your stomach, in the center of your heart that makes one do things we don’t want to do, but we do nonetheless because it is expected, because one has to.

Girls always dream of being Lizzie and holding out for love, for passion, for someone who is going to understand one’s quirks in personality. Girls dream of being Lizzie and being brave and holding out for Mr. Darcy, but I am afraid I would have never been a Lizzie Bennett and that I am destined to be a Fanny Price, my most hated of Austen’s heroines.

I am afraid that my sense of responsibility keeps me from doing what I dream of doing and sending everyone to hell and being utterly selfish and caring only about what I want and what I need and what I expect of life. But I am, no matter how hard I try, going ‘round and ‘round doing what I have to do.

I would’ve married Mr. Collins. I would’ve married a totally unsuitable person to save my family from destitution. I would have had sex and bore him children and endured the attentions of Lady Catherine de Burgh simply because it was expected of me.

There is no rebellion in me, no overwhelming passion, because responsibility shadows, swallows, overwhelms everything else. I am doomed to be responsible. I am doomed to swallow my wants and do what needs to be done. Why do I have to? Why can’t I just ignore everything that needs to be done and simply be? Is it my lot in life to take care of what needs to be taken care of disregarding completely the hungers in my soul that need to be fed?

I wish I was more ambitious. Ambitious enough that only my interest seemed to matter, but my ambitions are simple: Health for those I love, to be loved, a house of my own, a job that I like and occasional travels that show me the world out there. I don’t wish for riches and grandeur, I don’t crave fame and fortune. I work for a multibillionaire and I know that money does not necessarily mean happiness. I can’t help but think that if I wanted it more, wished for it more, ignored others more I could have everything I wanted.

Sometimes I want to run away from everything, expectations, family, friends… and myself. Let’s combine those two and really put together what I want to run away from: Family expectations.

Sometimes I wish I was more like my brother, who has no regard for anyone but himself. No regard but what he wants. Sometimes I wish I could grab my credit card and disappear into oblivion in a small town in the middle of nowhere U.S. and work at some dinner where my name is not my name and I can spend my days doing something little and meaningful and write and get up knowing that I will write some more and do something with my days that does not include disappearing in anonymity in an office, doing nothing worth wile and being invisible.

I know the feeling will disappear and tomorrow I will get up and do what is expected. Dry, cold, reliable, and responsible Melissa, doing what needs to be done, no matter what. But right now I want to be more, do more.

I know it’s silly. I get to the end of this post and I realize how many times I have said in the past, “With privilege comes responsibility” and I am oh so privileged with a big family. I just wish there was someone to share those big responsibility’s with.

They feel so heavy sometimes.