It’s been so quiet lately. I have a cold so I have had to miss out both on Halloween and on phone banking, but at least the temperature has dipped into the low 80s so I can sometimes wear jeans outside at night now. I’ve picked up a little more work and if I can stop sneezing and blowing my nose long enough today I’ll deposit my first paycheck (which will just about cover my monthly student loan but I am way past complaining about that now) since February. I’m teaching myself how to embroider and am currently practicing on unsuspecting tea towels while I listen to music and check my email and obsess over the political blogs, hoping something somewhere will change soon.
So here it’s November, and I’ve been back in the States now for five months, back in Miami for two. Nothing has gone the way I’d thought it would go—when I left Wellington the last time I thought I was being sober and conservative by estimating I’d be back in September—and while I haven’t given up on returning, not yet, not yet, I’ve had to stop…worrying, I guess, because I simply don’t have the energy anymore to regret decisions I’ve made or to spin out the worst case scenarios. I’ve even had to stop imagining my returning do and the Cuba Street Carnival and Christmas and all the old and new friends waiting for me there. I’ve had to stop looking at potential flats on TradeMe and wondering when I might next be able to take a week in Australia. I’ve had to stop daydreaming about not having to count the days with D., about unpacking my bags, about that one little stamp in my passport that will let me live in my city.
So all I can do, all I have been doing, is collating the papers and doing the interviews and writing the emails and calling the immigration office. I just do it, I don’t think about it too hard and I don’t want it too much. I make the copies in triplicate and answer the questions and pay the fees. I don’t consider what I will do if things continue to not go as I’d thought they’d go.
(Interestingly, this is how I’m dealing with my acute anxiety about the election, too: make the donation, make the calls, stand in line to vote, and don’t hope too much.)
And now all there is to do now is wait, and to carry on as I have been: working when I get the chance, staying in touch with the people I miss, cooking dinner for my mom, reading books, watching DVDs, listening to music, taking walks. I can hardly remember the last six months or so and the future is more opaque to me than it’s ever been, so I just do what I do every day and stay quiet, waiting, in the present.