No, actually it's 4am and I'm hyperventilating. First, I somehow missed a VERY IMPORTANT email from my lawyer telling me when I should I have my waiver docs in her hands and it's, oh, TEN DAYS AWAY. I mean, none of these letters has even been written yet and it's very difficult to get people here (in ES) that want to/will write the letters.
And then, the reason I even went to write her in the first place was because I was freaking out after reading blogs and came across this family who is going through the same waiver process as us. She had gone to a meeting at the embassy here and spoken with the "head of immigration cases" who said:
We asked if living in El Salvador while we are waiting will have a negative effect on our cases and she answered a definite "yes". (…) She said if you are living in El Salvador then what is your hardship? You're already proving you can do it.
This has been my biggest fear in starting the process all along and now it's been confirmed by the "head of immigration cases"!!!! It's sickening to be penalized for not wanting to be separated from your spouse. As if it was soooooo easy to uproot my life and come here. As if it wasn't a major decision that I didn't take lightly and that life here is just easy peasy. As if I wasn't sitting in my room here, counting the days until we can go home like a prisoner carving X's on a concrete wall of their jail cell. AS IF!!!
Further, several things that have definitely made my life and transition here easier will definitely work against having to prove hardship. Things such as: speaking fluent Spanish (which in theory should mean I can easily integrate myself into my community-yeah right), having a job (clearly I can support us, don't worry about that mountain of debt and student loans I pay every month), and the worst to me—not having kids. You know, we WANT KIDS. In fact we're at the point where we want them now. So many things hold us back though, like me not wanting to give birth in a free clinic in Chalate, not wanting to travel back to the US and give birth without my husband there to support me, not wanting to be pregnant and uncomfortable in the CAMPO. I know the people here do it but I'm scared. I'm already freaked out enough about delivering a person into the world from my body, now I feel pressured to get pregnant so it will help our hardship/waiver case!
In other visa news, we made the l o n g voyage to San Salvador to apply for M's visa to Spain. Of course everything we had was wrong wrong WRONG, so we'll be returning there when we have all the right documents together. Someone out there say a prayer that his visa is processed quickly. I need to get out of here, and by here I mean this house. We need our own place, our own space. His family has been very generous in letting us stay here and we are very grateful. But I'm ready to….spread my wings? Escape? Get the freak outta here? I'm thinking of taking an unscheduled detour to the US for a week or so. This has the added benefit of restarting my 90 day tourist visa so that's a good excuse. El Salvador, I need a break today. And I have not seen one kit kat in this country yet.
