Saturday, Jul. 08, 2023 - 4:35 pm.
Passport update: After paying to email UK Immigration Offices (WTF???), they appeared to have "escalated" my request, and this week I got news that a decision had been made regarding my visa. Bitch, I was not begging for a visa, I was demanding that you stopped withholding my passport and returned it to me.
The conferece I was going to attend in the UK was this week. I feel a bit heartbroken about missing it and not being able to see UK friends as I'd envisioned. Plus, asking for a refund from the conference organizers is another struggle because they're requesting that I prove to them that I didn't get the visa. I can only show them proof that I don't know if I got it or not, two months after I applied for it.
Their decision on my visa is gonna be a joke, anyway. Rejected? Granted? The Brighton conference has passed, I got all the emails about how grand it was. Forgive me for going on and on about this, but I'm so pissed off and anxious and desperate, and there's no one I can hold accountable for all the time and money I've wasted since I started working on my application in April.
The UKVI kept me from doing my job: my presenting at the conference was part of a government-funded research project. Now they're close to keep me from traveling to see my family, the only chance I have to do that this year. I don't know where the UK visa decisions are taken (Liverpool for me, by the looks of one of the emails I got?), but then they have to send it from there to the rip-off center in Santiago and then to me.
I'm supposed to be travelling on the 20th. If they did their job, I could trust I'll have the passport by then, but does any of my writing on this topic give an indication that UKVI have done their damned job? I essentially paid them AND their outsourced rip-off agency to toss my most essential form of ID across continents for two months and keep me from doing my job and potentially from seeing my family. Fuck them. Fuck them so hard.
And again: FUCK THEM.
*
Three positive-ish things:
1. The kitten we rescued in June has been adopted, and if all goes well, he's going to his new home this week. It's been exhausting screening requests to adopt him; some of them were appreciated, others not so much (like, lady, are you aware we're not giving away a piece of furniture?).
Elmo has been spayed, got his chip on, and all his vaccines are up to date. We're taking him to the vet on Monday for one last check-up and vaccine, and then hopefully the gal who's adopting him will come for him. She seems quite legit, loving and responsible, it's just that with these things you only breath with relief when the person is actually in front of you with the adopteé in their arms ready to take them home.
This kitten is a hoot, I tell you. He's cute, sweet and funny. But Andrew and I confirmed that having two cats is the sweet spot for us. Plus, Elmo is still a baby, he has lots of energy: rips off a whole curtain, breaks a bowl, plays fetch with you and his toy mouse 50 times in a row. Our 12-year old(!) cats are not having it.
The best we can do is make sure Elmo is sent on his way to have the best life a cat can have.
2. Speaking of adoption: Andrew and I have finally been called for an interview at the regional adoption unit. They have both our psychological reports after finishing therapy.
The two ladies at the unit (the only two people running the unit for a whole ass-region of this country) wrote to us on an email that these reports were suppossed to be evaluated by the psychologist that sent us to therapy in the first place. I felt a deep punch on my stomach because I don't want to see that stupid woman ever again. But then the next line said she wasn't working with the adoption unit anymore, so that's good. And I guess that's why the two ladies are interviewing us.
I want to feel happy that we're moving forward with the adoption process, but something else might happen and stop us in our tracks again. I've just learned to wait for the worse. I'd never felt so beaten up like I did when that woman said, over the course of one hour and a half, that we weren't fit to be parents. Fuck that woman, oh my God. I remember her and I start crying out of anger.
OK, OK. Positive outlook. At least something's happening in our adoption process.
3. We went to see a house yesterday. That's the one. It's not in the neighborhood that we wanted, but we've tried that place with no luck since September, it's time to move on. I've learned to go where you're wanted, or at least not insist where you are not.
We want that house, plain and simple. It'll require quite a lot of work, but this is the first time that I've seen a place and felt that doesn't matter. I saw myself living there. I saw us living there.
BUT. You've heard me go on about my passport, about the adoption process, and I haven't even told you about some shit about work along the same lines. From all that, I know there's room for disappointment, for things just not going our way. I'm frustrated, I'm sick and tired of being denied things I've earned; things that are huge, that I know I'm not automatically entitled to, and that I did not take lightly for a second. I'm just constantly being told that I'm not good enough.
So we might not be good enough for the house. More properly, we might just not have enough money to pay for that house. We were hoping to get news about the price today, but by now it seems we'll have to wait until Monday, or even later.
Real state prices are so ridiculous these days, we just browse houses and apartments and laugh and get angry. So... so be it. Andrew and I would love to buy that house, but if we can't afford it, then we can't afford it. And I think we'd be at peace with the latter. We'd be sorry, but we'd be at peace.
We also have an apartment lined up, as a plan B. It has pros and cons, but this one we can afford. We just want something in our life circumstances to change for the better, man.
We've been trying to build a home with kids since September 2019, and to this date we're still living like uni students. There's a threshold of resources that we're asked to have to move up in life like we want, but whenever we get those resources, the threshold moves up too.
Despite our best efforts, nothing changes. I'm beat and exhausted.
prev / next