It’s my 1st Wedding Anniversary Today!
The last year has been both good and bad. The great thing is that none of the bad has come from being Married or from anything to do with my relationship with my wife. I Love Sheila and she makes me very happy! It’s good in a way that the bad parts of the last year have, annoyingly, all come from going through the U.S. Immigration process.
The great thing for Sheila and I is that we told each other everything - we haven’t had a single ‘uncomfortable’ conversation about each other’s past or any of that stuff. We’re very open on everything and this allows us to never really have any arguments (which always seem to spring from someone not telling someone else something they should have). We’re also very good at compromising and as far as I can remember, have never argued over a choice we had to make. I don’t actually think we’ve ever had a fight yet - sure, we have been upset with each other 4 or 5 times in the last year, but that’s it - and the good thing about those times was that we ended up just feeling bad about upsetting the other person!
One of the most difficult things for me personally has been U.S. Immigration forcing me to stay in the United States while I am being processed (if I leave, I won’t be able to be with my wife probably for a couple of years). This means I haven’t seen my family (in the UK) face-to-face for fifteen months and this has been the hardest thing I have had to cope with.
Just recently we decided that we will never have a Wedding. We had planned to be through Immigration last year and be on with our lives soon enough to have a Wedding ceremony on our 1st Anniversary (last year we got Married in a Courthouse with just Sheila’s parents present - the entire ceremony took just over 1 minute - we taped it). U.S. Immigration ruined our opportunity for this as we now feel that the moment has passed and it now just would not feel right to have a Wedding ceremony.
Any money we would have spent on a Wedding, we’re going to put into either a house, or travelling around a bit once I’m ‘released’. Of course this means we’re losing out in a lot of things that come with the whole ‘Wedding experience’. No money to start our life in the form of gifts, no honeymoon (we didn’t go anywhere in the last year - we’ve had absolutely no celebration of Marriage except going out for a meal with a few friends the day after our Marriage last year), no big gathering of family and friends, nothing. My family in the UK haven’t even met my wife or her family…
I would like to thank anyone who gave a gift for the Wedding Shower we hastily arranged prior to the Marriage last year - you should have all gotten thank you cards I hope!
Immigration is a necessary evil and I totally accept it however much it might mess up our early life together. The hardship and poor lifestyle we’ve had to live for the last year has really given us a lesson we’ll never forget. We appreciate the value of money more than probably anyone else I know.
While I am on the money issue, I have to say thank you to our Landlord. He has accepted over the last year what our position has been and has accepted late payment of rent quite a few times when we had to push-back payments for a month (usually every three months).
So, where are we now? We’re in the same position we were a full year ago. We’re poor as hell, we can’t do anything about it and we’re trapped until Immigration decide. They refused us once because of a very silly error (we mailed forms in the ‘wrong order’) and I’m pretty sure that they can refuse us again if they feel like it. With no end in sight, it’s very hard to stay motivated, but with a supportive wife I find that when I feel down - she’s there for me, when she feels down - I’m there for her. Hopefully with an Immigration Interview scheduled for April 22nd (something we didn’t even get offered last time), we’ll be able to see an end to the madness after that! Our attorney was very positive about it!
Also in the last year, Sheila lost her grandmother. I got to meet a huge amount of the extended family and was made to feel oh-so-welcome at the funeral. I am very pleased that I was able to be here for Sheila when she needed me and I’m so happy that her grandmother got to meet me and approved of me. The night she passed I had given her a hug and got a kiss on the cheek from her as we left Sheila’s parents, Sheila was sick and didn’t hug her… The next day when Sheila realized this, I told her to kiss my cheek as I hadn’t washed it yet… That is a really emotional memory.
Sheila’s sister also went in for surgery on her brain in the last couple of weeks and that was really scary, she seems to be doing OK for the moment, but the worrying continues…
Anyway, it’s been an interesting year full of trials of one sort or another. The great thing that I hold onto every day is that one thing that seems rock-solid is the quality of our relationship… Everything else doesn’t ruin that.
Tags: Anniversary, Immigration, Marriage, UK, United States, USCIS, Wedding