See You Next Time

Here’s where things stand at the end of the summer.

My Expression Of Interest, which is the first step in applying for New Zealand residency, was accepted a couple of weeks ago, much earlier than I expected it would be. They choose from the pool every two weeks and my application was chosen the first fortnight after I submitted it, which is pretty awesome. Now they’re checking to make sure that I’m not an axe murderer, and then if it turns out I’m not (fingers crossed!) then they’ll invite me to actually apply. So basically I have sent New Zealand a drink from across the bar, and now New Zealand is looking me up and down and deciding if I’m hot enough to talk to. In approximately two months New Zealand will, I hope, come sit next to me and let me feel it up–sooner if I actually get a job offer there and yeah, I think I’ll end this metaphor right now, thanks.

I’ve also started working a little more diligently on getting a job in Wellington–I feel like I’ve been working on that for the past six months, actually, but I guess I’m still doing so. Anyway this involves getting registered as a social worker in New Zealand, which involves, of course, a completely different set of forms and applications and, obviously, fees, so now I find myself calling the school of social work to ask them to write a letter stating that I did in fact complete all the requirements for a master’s in social work, just like my diploma for said master of social work would seem to indicate. I find myself sending in my fingerprints to the FBI (“It’s like the movies!” said D. when I told him about this) and making multiple scans of my terrible, terrible passport photo and my naturalization papers from when I became an American citizen at age two (“Height: Two feet. Weight: 35 pounds.”). I find myself paying seventy-five dollars for an email saying that my aforementioned Master’s of Social Work means that my master’s degree? in social work. I’m happy to report that I am only knee-deep in this process and that I will be spending the next wee while doing more and more and more of this. Please take this into consideration if you want to talk to me ever again because I will do nothing, nothing, but discuss all these application forms and their attendant fees in exhaustive, richly textured detail. I’m looking at my phone right now waiting for you to call, actually. Why aren’t you calling me, girl?

And I’m going to Miami again tomorrow night. I’m going to be staying with my mom and trying to get some work that somehow won’t mind that I am trying to move to the other side of the country at as-yet-undisclosed time. I was saying today that I haven’t flown to Miami without a return ticket since I was about seventeen years old–I haven’t been there at this time of year since I was in high school. I’m super excited to spend a lot of time with my mom and my sister but I’m not sure what it’s going to be like there, living on the resort island where I am pretty much the only person who walks to the grocery store and carries my reuseable tote bags. I feel a little weird about moving home at the age of thirty-three, I have to tell you, but I feel a little AWESOME about not couch-surfing, I tell you what. It’s anyone’s guess, though, what being there not-on-vacation will be like. I’m a tiny bit scared.

I have just felt so disconnected to everything lately. I’ve been going to Value Village and to the post office and to various friends’ houses and to my cousin’s garage and so on and so forth. The mountain of stuff is finally gone, all been given away or sold or sent to my mom’s house, out from underneath me, for the moment. I’ve stayed at four different houses in eight weeks, not including Italy, and have begun to have dreams about an imaginary apartment that I decorate however I want and that is filled with all the stuff I just got rid of. I’ve said goodbye over and over and over again, and I just can’t do it anymore–I have been saying “See you next time!” because I can’t deal with the reality of getting on that plane tomorrow; it’s not real because it’s not happening, right? If I just keep focusing on the next step, the next thing, if I just keep looking forward then I don’t have to think about what’s back here, what I’m leaving behind.