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The story of when I didn't have a home (happy ending thou...
2 years ago
Nearly 5 years since I've posted a journal here, wow. May as well post something since it's fun to look back at these years later and see how my life has changed over time, even if nobody's reading. The last journal I posted was about the fact that I finally got to move to the UK, and that was awesome.
With that said, I uhh... technically left something out in my last journal due to embarrassment. So, getting to actually get through the process to be allowed to move to the UK was a huge pain. First application failed due to not having some paperwork that the site had specifically said not to send (yay) which meant waiting months before I could apply again. I think it's 6 months that you have to wait? Or maybe it was 3. I forget. I just remember that the time between getting to send in your next application and also waiting to hear back is a total of 9 or so months, which is... not great.
Got a legal person to help with the second application, and because the first had failed, he made sure I had everything correct. We also had a wedding day set up that would take place in the UK after I got to move there. Meanwhile, my cousin and I had been living together and we weren't going to be renewing our lease at our apartment since both of us were going to be moving away. Jad (my now-husband) got to visit me in America when it was time to start getting stuff moved out, so things were looking great.
By the time the lease was up, I hadn't received my letter telling me the results of my application, but the max allotted time was almost up. So, I packed up my important things, put them in my car, and had to find somewhere to stay. We ended up getting the cheapest hotel we could find and figured it'd be fine since we weren't going to be staying there long.
For those who don't know, the maximum amount of time a tourist can visit America is 3 months. After that, they have to leave. Time was ticking down while my application letter still wasn't back yet.
Finally, the 3 month mark hit and Jad legally had to leave and fly back home. Suddenly I was now left in an empty hotel room with just me and the 4 or 5 small boxes of stuff that I owned, but it shouldn't be much longer to finally get the application email back. It had to be email and not a letter seeing as I had no address anymore.
Then finally, the email came. I opened it up, excited that I'd finally get to move to the UK and start my life with Jad. I opened the email up, and...
DENIED.
The reasoning in the letter? It said that they did not believe we were actually in a relationship or had ever met before... despite having sent tons of chat logs and they could literally see us together in the photo we sent them. The letter said they didn't believe we had ever met and that it was not unreasonable to expect us to prove we were together with a picture. WE SENT THEM A PICTURE. There was nothing about that application that should have made it come back as denied. My solicitor that we hired was completely shocked because that was the first time in his career he had ever seen that happen. The theory that I have, and many of my family members have as well, is that it might actually be related to the fact that it's a gay relationship. And it doesn't matter if the grounds on which they reject you is legit or not because there's nothing you can do about it. You can apply for an appeal but that takes at least a year to go through and you can't add or change anything to the application at all, which means there'd be no way to make sure we didn't have them say the same thing again and waste another year.
Welp. Great. That meant I was now without a home, and the time it would take to be able to send in a new application again and then wait for results was going to be about 9 months... again...
So the situation I was in at that moment, to say it again, is that I was in a hotel room by myself with no home. I had nobody I could stay with. Jad couldn't come back for another 3 months. I couldn't even start on a new application for several months. That was an... interesting point in my life. The internet there was really bad so I couldn't play games, and youtube videos took a long time to load. So most of my time was just spent talking to people in a visual novel server. The Echo server, specifically.
To top it off, the hotel I was staying at was cheap for a reason. The staff was all nice, and the rooms weren't bad, but the neighborhood uhh... There were people screaming at each other on my floor constantly. People calling the police on each other. I called the police at one point when I heard a guy in the room next to mine hitting stuff and threatening a woman's life. It was... not great. I did not feel safe there. It also didn't help that even a cheap hotel is still fairly expensive, so I wasn't going to be able to stay there forever because it was eating through my savings.
A few people on the Echo server offered to let me move in with them for as long as I needed. At the same time, someone I had been friends with but wasn't on good terms with anymore offered to let me move in with him too, so his offer was the one I chose since even if we weren't on the best terms, I had known him a lot longer. Of course, it was going to take a little while before that could get set up.
In the meantime, Jad and I decided we were still going to have a wedding around the same date we originally planned, even if it couldn't be in England (if an application is rejected, you cannot visit that country again unless you get a later application approved). So Jad couldn't come to America yet still. I couldn't go to England. So we had to look for a country that we could go to that we could actually get married in. A lot of places either did not have legalized gay marriage, or one of you had to live in that country. In the end, our options were Canada or Australia. We ended up picking Canada.
The timeline at this point was, hmm... interesting, heh... A lot of stuff happened very fast.
Some time went by and I was finally going to get to fly from Texas to West Virginia to move in with my friend. We were waiting on his brother and his friend to move out so that we could then move in. It was a house his family owned. So uhh... I packed up my stuff and put it in my car, left my car at the airport and then flew to West Virginia. From there, I would be leaving in a day or two (I forget which) to immediately fly to Canada. But this meant I had a home finally, even if I'd only get to be there a couple days.
That was maybe too hopeful. The house was not in a livable state when I got there. The previous people who lived there left trash and stuff EVERYWHERE. Old broken furniture was lying sideways and upsidedown everywhere. One of the rooms had old dog poop stuck into the carpet from when they left their dog locked in there most days (I feel really bad for their dog). Half of the house was at a tilt due to bad foundation. There were holes in parts of the floor where you could see the grass and dirt below, and I don't mean small holes either. I mean big enough to fall through. It was also HEAVILY infested with fleas. Also mice too but at least mice are cute.
I can't overstate just how absolutely bad the flea infestation was. I was in there less than 10 minutes before my legs were completely bitten up. So my friend drove me to a hotel for me to stay at. I guess I *technically* had a home now even if it wasn't livable? I don't know if that even counts though.
Anyway, I ended up going directly from there to Canada where I got to meet up with Jad again. Both of our flights got there really late and so we had to stay at a hotel by the airport instead of the one we had booked in another city. Next day, we got to go to the hotel we were meant to be at, and it was nice. We were together and happy.
As time drew closer to our wedding day, Jad's family and one of his friends flew out there and got a hotel near ours. That whole period with us all there in Canada together is probably one of the best times in my life. His family was extremely kind and welcoming to me. I mean, I had met most of them before, but still!
Just after our wedding, the staff at the hotel Jad's family was staying at offered to let us stay at their hotel for a discounted price since they liked Jad's mom a lot. It was also a much nicer hotel than the one we had been staying at.
Eventually, they all flew back home and then the hotel we were staying at was going to close for several months. It wasn't really profitable for them to stay open in winter. So we then went to another hotel. We stayed there for the two remaining months we could be there before we had to leave.
From there, Jad was able to go with me to America since he had been outside the country for long enough. So we flew to Texas. Got my stuff from my car to ship to West Virginia, sold the car, stayed in a hotel for a short while, then visited my family for one last time before flying to West Virginia. By that point, we had all of our stuff ready to go for when we'd finally get to submit my new application. So we stayed in my new home with my new roommate for 3 months until it was almost time for Jad to have to leave the country again. Right before that, we had to fly to New York to submit my application (very few cities in America let you do a "premium" package thing which speeds up the process, and believe me, speeding it up at this point was very important to us). The cool thing is that it turned out several of our online friends lived in that area, so we got to spend time with them and that was cool. Our hotel there wasn't great but it was something.
Oh, and the application this time? Since they said they didn't believe we were in a real relationship and had ever met, we sent them 50 pictures and labeled when and where each was taken as well as what we were doing in each.
After that, Jad and I had to part ways. He flew home and I flew back to my new home.
I then stayed in my new home in West Virginia for months while I waited. We had gotten the house into a state where we no longer had as much trash and broken furniture from the previous people, and we had gotten the flea population to a uhh... "manageable" amount. By that I meant I was still constantly getting bitten and my legs permanently itched, but it was at least bearable. And it was a home. After going so long without one, I was just happy to finally have somewhere I could call home again. Considering before that, I had stayed at 8 hotels in total across one year, so I was constantly going between places.
Oh yeah, having a home finally meant that I could actually put down an address for stuff and start receiving mail again. That's a thing. You'd be surprised how difficult things are when you don't have an address to give people.
After spending several months in that house, I got an email back about my application.
APPROVED! HELL YEAH!
I probably should have felt happy and excited at that point, but instead I was just scared that somehow something else was going to go wrong in the process. I was going to have to go back to New York to get my documents before I could finally go, after all.
Jad was super happy to hear the news. He had also apparently bought tickets for both of us to a convention for the next weekend as a sort of good luck charm, which I was completely unaware of. But that meant I needed to get stuff set up really fast to move out if I wanted to go.
Jad and I both flew to New York where we could meet up and then pick up my visa. We stayed in a hotel for a short while (hotels yay) and got to say hi to our friends again, and then we got to fly to the UK, to my new home, where I am now.
It is good to be home.
Oh, and my belongings got turned away at customs and sent back to the West Virginia house and from there, my roommate's dad who owned the property tossed out all of my stuff. That sucked. But honestly, I wasn't as upset as I probably should've been. I was just happy that after so long, 7 years into our long-distance relationship, I could finally live with my husband.
And to be honest? Having a home here with Jad and my new family is everything I could have ever dreamed, and more. The past 4 years of living here have been great.
With that said, I uhh... technically left something out in my last journal due to embarrassment. So, getting to actually get through the process to be allowed to move to the UK was a huge pain. First application failed due to not having some paperwork that the site had specifically said not to send (yay) which meant waiting months before I could apply again. I think it's 6 months that you have to wait? Or maybe it was 3. I forget. I just remember that the time between getting to send in your next application and also waiting to hear back is a total of 9 or so months, which is... not great.
Got a legal person to help with the second application, and because the first had failed, he made sure I had everything correct. We also had a wedding day set up that would take place in the UK after I got to move there. Meanwhile, my cousin and I had been living together and we weren't going to be renewing our lease at our apartment since both of us were going to be moving away. Jad (my now-husband) got to visit me in America when it was time to start getting stuff moved out, so things were looking great.
By the time the lease was up, I hadn't received my letter telling me the results of my application, but the max allotted time was almost up. So, I packed up my important things, put them in my car, and had to find somewhere to stay. We ended up getting the cheapest hotel we could find and figured it'd be fine since we weren't going to be staying there long.
For those who don't know, the maximum amount of time a tourist can visit America is 3 months. After that, they have to leave. Time was ticking down while my application letter still wasn't back yet.
Finally, the 3 month mark hit and Jad legally had to leave and fly back home. Suddenly I was now left in an empty hotel room with just me and the 4 or 5 small boxes of stuff that I owned, but it shouldn't be much longer to finally get the application email back. It had to be email and not a letter seeing as I had no address anymore.
Then finally, the email came. I opened it up, excited that I'd finally get to move to the UK and start my life with Jad. I opened the email up, and...
DENIED.
The reasoning in the letter? It said that they did not believe we were actually in a relationship or had ever met before... despite having sent tons of chat logs and they could literally see us together in the photo we sent them. The letter said they didn't believe we had ever met and that it was not unreasonable to expect us to prove we were together with a picture. WE SENT THEM A PICTURE. There was nothing about that application that should have made it come back as denied. My solicitor that we hired was completely shocked because that was the first time in his career he had ever seen that happen. The theory that I have, and many of my family members have as well, is that it might actually be related to the fact that it's a gay relationship. And it doesn't matter if the grounds on which they reject you is legit or not because there's nothing you can do about it. You can apply for an appeal but that takes at least a year to go through and you can't add or change anything to the application at all, which means there'd be no way to make sure we didn't have them say the same thing again and waste another year.
Welp. Great. That meant I was now without a home, and the time it would take to be able to send in a new application again and then wait for results was going to be about 9 months... again...
So the situation I was in at that moment, to say it again, is that I was in a hotel room by myself with no home. I had nobody I could stay with. Jad couldn't come back for another 3 months. I couldn't even start on a new application for several months. That was an... interesting point in my life. The internet there was really bad so I couldn't play games, and youtube videos took a long time to load. So most of my time was just spent talking to people in a visual novel server. The Echo server, specifically.
To top it off, the hotel I was staying at was cheap for a reason. The staff was all nice, and the rooms weren't bad, but the neighborhood uhh... There were people screaming at each other on my floor constantly. People calling the police on each other. I called the police at one point when I heard a guy in the room next to mine hitting stuff and threatening a woman's life. It was... not great. I did not feel safe there. It also didn't help that even a cheap hotel is still fairly expensive, so I wasn't going to be able to stay there forever because it was eating through my savings.
A few people on the Echo server offered to let me move in with them for as long as I needed. At the same time, someone I had been friends with but wasn't on good terms with anymore offered to let me move in with him too, so his offer was the one I chose since even if we weren't on the best terms, I had known him a lot longer. Of course, it was going to take a little while before that could get set up.
In the meantime, Jad and I decided we were still going to have a wedding around the same date we originally planned, even if it couldn't be in England (if an application is rejected, you cannot visit that country again unless you get a later application approved). So Jad couldn't come to America yet still. I couldn't go to England. So we had to look for a country that we could go to that we could actually get married in. A lot of places either did not have legalized gay marriage, or one of you had to live in that country. In the end, our options were Canada or Australia. We ended up picking Canada.
The timeline at this point was, hmm... interesting, heh... A lot of stuff happened very fast.
Some time went by and I was finally going to get to fly from Texas to West Virginia to move in with my friend. We were waiting on his brother and his friend to move out so that we could then move in. It was a house his family owned. So uhh... I packed up my stuff and put it in my car, left my car at the airport and then flew to West Virginia. From there, I would be leaving in a day or two (I forget which) to immediately fly to Canada. But this meant I had a home finally, even if I'd only get to be there a couple days.
That was maybe too hopeful. The house was not in a livable state when I got there. The previous people who lived there left trash and stuff EVERYWHERE. Old broken furniture was lying sideways and upsidedown everywhere. One of the rooms had old dog poop stuck into the carpet from when they left their dog locked in there most days (I feel really bad for their dog). Half of the house was at a tilt due to bad foundation. There were holes in parts of the floor where you could see the grass and dirt below, and I don't mean small holes either. I mean big enough to fall through. It was also HEAVILY infested with fleas. Also mice too but at least mice are cute.
I can't overstate just how absolutely bad the flea infestation was. I was in there less than 10 minutes before my legs were completely bitten up. So my friend drove me to a hotel for me to stay at. I guess I *technically* had a home now even if it wasn't livable? I don't know if that even counts though.
Anyway, I ended up going directly from there to Canada where I got to meet up with Jad again. Both of our flights got there really late and so we had to stay at a hotel by the airport instead of the one we had booked in another city. Next day, we got to go to the hotel we were meant to be at, and it was nice. We were together and happy.
As time drew closer to our wedding day, Jad's family and one of his friends flew out there and got a hotel near ours. That whole period with us all there in Canada together is probably one of the best times in my life. His family was extremely kind and welcoming to me. I mean, I had met most of them before, but still!
Just after our wedding, the staff at the hotel Jad's family was staying at offered to let us stay at their hotel for a discounted price since they liked Jad's mom a lot. It was also a much nicer hotel than the one we had been staying at.
Eventually, they all flew back home and then the hotel we were staying at was going to close for several months. It wasn't really profitable for them to stay open in winter. So we then went to another hotel. We stayed there for the two remaining months we could be there before we had to leave.
From there, Jad was able to go with me to America since he had been outside the country for long enough. So we flew to Texas. Got my stuff from my car to ship to West Virginia, sold the car, stayed in a hotel for a short while, then visited my family for one last time before flying to West Virginia. By that point, we had all of our stuff ready to go for when we'd finally get to submit my new application. So we stayed in my new home with my new roommate for 3 months until it was almost time for Jad to have to leave the country again. Right before that, we had to fly to New York to submit my application (very few cities in America let you do a "premium" package thing which speeds up the process, and believe me, speeding it up at this point was very important to us). The cool thing is that it turned out several of our online friends lived in that area, so we got to spend time with them and that was cool. Our hotel there wasn't great but it was something.
Oh, and the application this time? Since they said they didn't believe we were in a real relationship and had ever met, we sent them 50 pictures and labeled when and where each was taken as well as what we were doing in each.
After that, Jad and I had to part ways. He flew home and I flew back to my new home.
I then stayed in my new home in West Virginia for months while I waited. We had gotten the house into a state where we no longer had as much trash and broken furniture from the previous people, and we had gotten the flea population to a uhh... "manageable" amount. By that I meant I was still constantly getting bitten and my legs permanently itched, but it was at least bearable. And it was a home. After going so long without one, I was just happy to finally have somewhere I could call home again. Considering before that, I had stayed at 8 hotels in total across one year, so I was constantly going between places.
Oh yeah, having a home finally meant that I could actually put down an address for stuff and start receiving mail again. That's a thing. You'd be surprised how difficult things are when you don't have an address to give people.
After spending several months in that house, I got an email back about my application.
APPROVED! HELL YEAH!
I probably should have felt happy and excited at that point, but instead I was just scared that somehow something else was going to go wrong in the process. I was going to have to go back to New York to get my documents before I could finally go, after all.
Jad was super happy to hear the news. He had also apparently bought tickets for both of us to a convention for the next weekend as a sort of good luck charm, which I was completely unaware of. But that meant I needed to get stuff set up really fast to move out if I wanted to go.
Jad and I both flew to New York where we could meet up and then pick up my visa. We stayed in a hotel for a short while (hotels yay) and got to say hi to our friends again, and then we got to fly to the UK, to my new home, where I am now.
It is good to be home.
Oh, and my belongings got turned away at customs and sent back to the West Virginia house and from there, my roommate's dad who owned the property tossed out all of my stuff. That sucked. But honestly, I wasn't as upset as I probably should've been. I was just happy that after so long, 7 years into our long-distance relationship, I could finally live with my husband.
And to be honest? Having a home here with Jad and my new family is everything I could have ever dreamed, and more. The past 4 years of living here have been great.
Your story is exhausting just to read about! That waiting period sounds nightmarish and I'm so glad you powered through all that and are happy where you are.
I can see how well you capture the vibe of Ted, Colin, and Daren's living arrangements. I had a feeling that the author of FbI must have actually lived in places where doors would fall off their frames if you leaned on them.
(I got fleas once. I shampooed with dog flea and tick shampoo. That stuff works! Nukes them where you sleep, too.)
I've lived in some... interesting places, but no doors falling off hinges at least!
I don't think there's anything we could've done to fully get rid of the fleas in that house. We flea bombed the house multiple times but with the location of the house and how open it was, they could just come back in from the woods. With a large mouse population in the house as well, they had plenty of reason to stay. There were quite a few stray dogs and cats in the neighborhood that would spread fleas around too. I'm just glad I don't have to deal with them anymore.