#17 Immigrants (We Get The Job Done)
about living the life I choose
If you're also someone living away from their home country and have to go through the fun #immigrationprocedures, this one, in particular, is for you. Thank you for building the life you want to live despite difficulty. I'm proud of you.
I am scared, still, of wanting what I want.
To explain:
This coming October, I’m back in that horrid, existential spot I’ve been in ever since graduating from university five years ago: it’ll be time to submit proof to the IND that shows them I still deserve to be here. To take space. To continue growing and loving and being in this country.
I think about how my life sometimes feels like it’s got an undercurrent of temporary. Just “for now”. Just “until.” I think about how this vague existentialism surrounds me, think about how that’s sometimes made me dissociate, think of what’s in front of me as a mirage or a montage of someone’s life instead of my own. Like I am borrowing someone’s clothes, someone’s name, someone’s story. Like it’ll be time soon, eventually, to “go back where I came from.”
I think about how feeling unsafe is something that pinches the base of my spine, makes me feel like I can’t bend or even tie my shoelaces without pushing my leg up with my hand. That’s how paralyzing it feels, even when I take time to talk to her, little Clem, hold her, and tell her I’m here to take care of her through everything. That’s how unstable it feels, like a betrayal of my own body, meant to walk, to laugh, a pinch of pain peppering my lower back every time I do these things, even sneeze.
On days like these I remember that this life I’ve built isn’t something I can ever take for granted, something I can’t think of as a given —and even when I think of how optimistic I could spin it, how seizing the day is quite a literal phrase in my world— and I sit with the fact that it’s not easy, that the reality I live is a product of everything I’ve wanted, everything I’ve worked for the past eight years.
I grew up into a young adult here. I fell (as close to it as I can think) in love here. I experienced intimacy here. I built a family from my friendships here. I began my career here. I learned to take care of a home that was shared with (dozens?) of people here, for the first time. There are so many things I’ve experienced, and so many more things I want to see, to be.
It won’t be soon before I have to talk with someone at the IND again, a phone number, another case manager, another series of emails, and (seemingly interminable) waits. I think about how my identity only matters to the people who decide if I stay here, as long as I can pay taxes and make enough money to justify living here. Always someone other, always a foreigner, always on borrowed time. Never really mine.
I hate being in this existential waiting room. I dread going inside that waiting room so much, I waited even longer, already over my limit, before I considered walking into that waiting room willingly again. I hate the sanitized feel of it, the way I have a BSN number that I have to copy below every greeting, the way I have to wait for hours on the phone line to get to speak to someone who helps decide my fate. I hate having to keep to justify, justify, justify space in a place that I’ve made home for close to a decade.
I always think that I chose this so I shouldn’t “get" to complain or just talk about how difficult it feels sometimes. And I think it’s self-defeatist (and self-sabotaging) to constantly think about how difficult it is to be an immigrant. I don’t want to spoil my experience. I want to savor my days and choose to do what I love for as long as I want, as long as I’m here.
It’s a double-edged sword because my deep awareness of living a life like this means I cannot force myself to do something I don’t want to do, be someone who I don’t want to be. (At least not anymore). And that’s something most people my age I've met here don’t necessarily notice. The same reason I have to renew my permit is the same reason I insist on being as present as possible, on doing what makes me feel passionate, on quitting anything that doesn’t.
My self-possession is the result and the source of temporary circumstances. My confidence is rooted in my potential for uprootedness. My identity is cemented by my iron-clad will to shape a life that serves me in a country that cannot make me any guarantees.
Now I border on the verge of “your struggle makes you stronger” and this is where I also border on exhaustion. I don’t want to have to be stronger. I don’t actually want to feel the weight of this struggle.
A friend recently told me she was impressed by my resilience. I didn’t really know how to respond. Resilience is a byproduct of having to make it work in my book, of learning to problem-solve, of thinking about the big picture, sometimes at the cost of other things you’d rather pay attention to on a random Tuesday at 3 p.m.
It’s not glamorous or admirable to become resilient in our current society. Resilience has become a response to even the most adverse environments, to facing adversity itself. I don’t want to be constantly resilient. I want to surrender. I want to be here.
What I really want is the choice to continue my life as it is. To have more control over a decision as big as choosing the country I live in. To save myself from the cycles, every 2 to 3 years, of justifying my space in this world I'm a part of. Of having to prove, prove, prove that I belong here. I’d love to forget my BSN or my case number or my case manager’s name. I’d love to sit in the Sun. I’d love to be allowed to be.
What makes me feel unsafe is the lack of control over something as seemingly determining as choosing where I want to live, what I want to do, even where I want to work. But I want what I want, and control is a sort of illusion. Everything can happen (and that goes both ways), life can surprise you (and it often does), and surrendering is worth it (it always is).
I remind myself I’m safe. I remind myself that wanting what I want any less won’t make the fear of it being taken away shrink any smaller. It won’t hurt less if I don’t get it. The only person I’m lying to is myself.
So I have to choose to be brave instead.