♫ 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.