How much more difficult does it have to get?

I took this picture at sunset on the beach in front of where I live.

The beach and the ocean. This is where I live now. This is what I have in front of my apartment and I see every day.

It is hard to think that I will have to leave this for an unknown place where to start a new life. But hopefully it will be a place where I will be able to have a life, as I am tired of traveling all the time and having no stability, making friends to leave them again after a couple of years, just when I get close to them. I am tired of feeling home in a place to have to leave it again. Since I decided to get engaged, my life is not here nor where my boyfriend is, in the USA. I am also very distant from everyone here, as I don't want to get attached and then have to suffer as it happened when I had to leave France. So, although I do not look forward to leave the place where I live now, which represents one of my dreams (living in front of the Ocean and being able to take long walks on the beach whenever I want), I also hope finally at the age of 37 to be able to have a life, live in a place that I can feel it is my home, get a dog with whom to share my long walks, possibly make some friends with whom I can share my life without being afraid of leaving them any time soon, and be closer to my boyfriend.

I got a new job and a new place ahead of me and although I am currently terrified for all those huge changes in my life and although last time I lived in the USA I ended up with a huge depression (and not for a joke, but a serious depression that last about three years), I try to keep a positive attitude toward it, especially focusing on the good things.

But the truth is that if it was not because it is easier to find a job for two people in the USA than in Europe and the fact that my boyfriend has a job that could actually help us even if my salary will be quite low (for American standards), I would rather live with him here in Europe than going to the USA. I have nothing against the USA and there are things I like and dislike of every country where I lived so far... so it is not that. But my family and friends are in Europe and I am deeply European in my way of living....I am actually perfectly fit for a small European town, like where I am now.

This to say that the coming change does actually cost me some mental effort to get used to it, I get immensely sad when I think that communicating and seeing my family will be much harder than now (I keep wondering if they will visit me and how often we will see each other considering how much a flight ticket costs), and it costs me some work to stay focused on the positive things. But I manage. Some days are better some less good...but I manage. Until I get under a pile of difficulties like today.

To make a long story short. My boyfriend is American. I am Italian. I have much more flexibility in my job than him. He has very little holidays. He has a better job stability than me. It is easier to get a job for me in the USA than for him in Europe. I cannot stay in the USA on a tourist visa for more than 90 days over a year. It is much easier to get a permanent position there if I am either already in the USA on a working VISA or if we are married.

From all this, the decisions that followed thinking that our relationship would be easier.

September last year, my boyfriend and I contacted the consulate in Florence to ask information about green card, immigration procedure, etc. What we got told was that basically once we were married, getting a green card for a spouse would be easy and that while I could not live permanently in the USA without a green card or an immigrant visa, I could travel while waiting for the green card back and forth with my passport and on a tourist visa.

What instead we found out today was that if I apply for an immigration visa, I CANNOT travel to the USA. This to prevent that while people are waiting for the green card approval, they become illegal immigrants.This actually has nothing to do with immigration offices, it is something enforced by the border patrols....it doesn't matter if I can demonstrate that I am traveling to visit my husband but that I have a job somewhere else for now to which I want and I need to get back....no, no, no....I may be a potential illegal immigrant. I understand that they cannot make a special case for everyone, but how ridiculous is that I get married and then I cannot see my husband for how long it takes to get a green card (which may take more than 7 months), unless he comes to visit me?

Not only.....even more stupid....the place where I got offered the job would not request a working visa for me (which is much quicker to get and would make our lives much easier) because I previously told them that I would apply for a green card after the wedding....so, now they told me to apply for the green card and if I don't get it by the end of October, then and only then they will apply for a working visa for me, hoping that it will be done by the time I would need to start my job.....

Gosh, all this is so frustrating....how difficult does it have to be to just want to be in the same place as my boyfriend???? and plus...I am really sick of feeling rejected all the time because "I am not American or I am already a legal immigrant in the USA" ...first I had this for the numerous job applications I sent, then some of the members of my boyfriend family made me feel not good enough because not American (or not from a civilized enough place because it is not the USA), and now this immigration crap....................................

and a friend of mine just told me that her cousin got a green card for the USA through the green card lottery...............COME ON!!!!!!!!!!! are you kidding me? I have a job, I will have a husband there and I cannot even enter the country while applying for a green card.

gosh, gosh, gosh.....


 

Quality of life

I am a spoiled girl. There is no doubt about this.

I live in front of the ocean. I work whenever I want at the time I want where I want. I travel. I have people who love me a lot. I have traveled to a lot of places, I have seen and known a lot of different parts of the world, met many interesting people, done many things already. I am healthy. I have a wonderful family. I know what it means to deeply love and be loved by someone. I have the job I wanted to do. My job is actually one of my passions.

I am lucky. And I know this. Despite being angry or down or feeling lost, I know that overall I have a fantastic life, I had so far an amazing life.

I am lucky and I am spoiled. Right now, I live in a total status of freedom. I live alone, I have no kids, no schedule, none depending on me. I count on my own capacities and myself. And I like it. I actually love it. But things are about to change. Not necessarily for something bad. But they will change. Commitment is at the door, in my personal and working life. I feel terrified. Petrified if I think about it. I feel I want to run away and hide on a beach somewhere (I actually exactly know where. I have been there once and that place since then represent my mental escape).

What terrifies me most is not the change itself. I am used to changing continuously: places, cultures, people. What terrifies me is to lose things that I now give for granted and are part of my routine. Running whenever I feel like around the ocean, walking to the bakery to buy fresh bread, walking around at any time of the day I want.

I have to move again and overall this next step, this next change of scenario is for good. I am getting married soon and I know that to make it work, we cannot have an ocean in between us. So, I am moving back to the USA and I am lucky enough to have found the job I wanted there. In this economy, this is definitively not something little. So far, so good.

But. I started this blog when I was living in the USA, about six years ago. I can't remember an unhappier, more depressing period in my life so far. I actually started this blog because I was so depressed, so lonely, so hopeless that the only thing that made me feel connected in some way was writing my thoughts, my feelings. I am scared of ending up in the same way. Is this a stupid fear? maybe.

The thing is that I like the USA. But there are also things of the USA that I really do not like. Last night I got to think about naming three things I hate about the USA. I didn't have to think very long:

1) Free guns
2) Need of having a car
3) Waste

Of course, I can also as easily think of three things I hate about Italy:

1) Corruption
2) Lack of a national spirit
3) Superficiality

And so on, I could list three things I hate about France, about Portugal, about Germany, probably about any of the countries where I have been living. However, not all these things I hate weight the same in terms of my quality of life and I deal extremely badly with the idea of living in a country where guns are legal. It makes me feel threatened all the time. It is not my culture. I am not used to that. Yes, European cities are dangerous too. I completely agree. But they are in a different way. There are dangerous parts of the city and you just don't go there. In the USA often is not only a part of a city, it is one street is safe and the next street is dangerous. Why? who knows why. Plus, you never know, but the person walking in front of you may have a gun, as well as your neighbor, as well as basically anyone else. So, some of the things that for me make my quality of life good, which are the possibility to walk or take public transportation anywhere I want to go without needing a car, the sense of freedom in time and space, getting fresh bread when I feel like, are all going to be lost with my next life change. Because I am not going to move to any of the American/more European life style cities.

I can deal with a lot of things, I can adapt fairly easily to different cultures, I can always find my own dimension in a new place. But living in a country where guns are free and owning a gun is the normality is not something I want to adapt to. When I discuss this with Americans, the reply to my questions I receive more often is that guns are necessary to defend ourselves from the ones who already have a gun.....it doesn't take an extraordinary IQ to understand that this is a circular explanation that will never solve itself. If guns would be under regulation, meaning that people owning a gun has to declare it and that from now on buying a gun would be permitted only in special cases, there would be less uncontrolled guns around, and less crazy people who get the chance to use them and to assault, shoot and kill people just because they are having a bad day.....

Unfortunately, there are so many personal interests in the USA in keeping things the way they are when it comes to guns (or public transportation, or public health system just to name a few things) that the poor Obama will never manage to regulate them. Unfortunately. Because people do not have the chance to understand and appreciate the value of freedom of movement and existence without feeling that you gotta own a gun to defend yourself from others who may threaten you.

When I was living in Germany I used to often work late at night. Late night means that sometimes I would bike back home at 2-3am. Often, I would bike at that time through the forest. I always felt that I could have biked through the forest at that time at night completely naked and nothing would have happened to me. Of course, there may always be the bad luck of meeting a bad guy. This happens everywhere. But if a bad guy doesn't not have a gun, first thing he has to get close to me to assault me, second thing at least it will cost him more effort to harm or kill me.....it is a small consolation, but it does reduce the chances to get severely harmed or killed.

Statistics at hand......

I wish I would know how to make a difference and help to ban free guns in the USA, which will be my future home place.

Just to stay on this subject.....this happened just a few days ago and these episodes keep happening over and over in the USA.