May – WTF Happened?!?

Hey guys. It’s the beginning of June so it’s time for Rounds ups and Resolutions. Well buckle all the way up because lemme tell you…May was one for the books and not in a good way.

If you’ve read my previous posts you would know how excited I was about May, it’s my birthday month and I had great plans. Not one plan worked out. Not. One.

The month started off a little stressful work wise as I had been planning to travel for my birthday so I was putting in real overtime to make sure I cleared off as much work as possible. I didn’t want to leave too much for other people to do or have too much to do when I came back. This meant I had to go to work earlier, leave later and work on Saturdays. This also meant that I had to work like whoa on my actual birthday and it was just an awful upside down kind of day. I didn’t get too worked up about it because hey, I’m travelling in a few days, not a big deal.

I was supposed to fly to New York with one of my best friends on the 24th. We had been planning this trip for months. I had originally wanted to visit her in November of last year for her 30th birthday but my UK passport wasn’t going to be renewed on time and I was denied a US visa for my Jamaican passport (that was Nov 6th, gyosh that was an awful experience). So I ended up not being able to see her on her birthday and I felt awful about it but we said no worries, we’ll try again for summer. Everything looked like it was working out. I got time off work, I had my UK passport, my visa waiver had been approved, I was good to go. Right up until I went to check in for my flight. Right up until the customer service rep. told me that ESTA visa waiver status had been denied. I was floored. I said that can’t be right, I have the paper right here that says it was approved. They kept checking and the system kept saying, “Travel Not Authorized”. Another customer service rep. said they would call US Customs and Border Patrol to find out what was wrong. When she came back, she said that the person she spoke informed her I should have gotten an email within 3 days of my application notifying me that my visa waiver hadn’t been approved. I triple checked my email while standing at the counter, there was nothing. No notification. Nothing. There was nothing that could be done. I had to call my friend who was waiting for me at the gate and tell her I couldn’t even get on the plane. Guys, I broke down crying in the airport. I didn’t know what to feel, I was just shocked and the tears kept coming. I had no choice but to go home. Later that night I told myself to get it together, make a plan. I was going to call the US Embassy in the morning and get things sorted out, I was going to ask a lawyer what could be done. The next morning when I woke up, gyosh it was hard to even function but I tried. I made the phone calls, sent the emails hoping someone could just tell me something and my trip could be salvaged. The embassies couldn’t help. US customs and border patrol told me I would have to apply for a tourist visa. No explanation as to why things had gone wrong in the first place but then again, they are under no obligation to tell me anything. That was it. I cried for at least 3 days. I’m crying just writing this.

That weekend I went back and forth between anger and sadness. I really just wanted to be left alone to sort through my emotions but apparently that’s not how things work in my family. I love them, don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love them but by Sunday I was ready to sign them all up for sensitivity training. On one hand I have a sister who kept asking me, “So when are you going to leave, when is the trip?”. I eventually snapped at her and said, “How am I supposed to do that with no visa and no ESTA? You want me to sneak in by boat?”. I had another sister who literally told me to snap out of it. I told her I wasn’t in the mood to talk and she actually told me to snap out of it. Dafuq? I had my parents treating me with concern meets nonchalance if that makes sense? Not even 24 hours after the whole thing went down, I was being told about the work I had to do when I got back on Monday. I’m not even kidding. I was being given the usual greeting card style phrases like, “Don’t let it get you down. Everything works out in the end” but on the other hand, they were calling each other and other people like my friends and my old family doctor(!!!) to express their concern and ask what they should do like I was on bloody suicide watch or something. It was all one big mess.

I went back to work on Monday, how I got through that I can’t even tell you. I tried to cheer myself up. I booked myself a 2 Day, 1 Night stay at a local hotel for a staycation, looked at their spa services, figured a good massage could do wonders. I made plans to go to the Calabash Literary Festival happening this weekend. I made bus reservations for the trip, arranged to meet friends. Things were looking up. Then Thursday, May 31st, the last day of the month happened. May found a way to screw me one last time. My bank had made some errors with my account and it turned out they hadn’t in fact billed me for some past purchases so I had less money than I thought I did meaning staycation now cancelled. Needless to say I flipped. One of the scariest things that can ever happen to you is checking your account online and seeing your money gone. It’s terrifying. While trying to deal with that and all with a smile because I’m at work and there are customers to deal with and orders to go out, I get a phone call from the bus company, the bus to the literary festival has been cancelled because of course it was. It had to be right? I was officially done and over May. I just couldn’t deal anymore.

Whew! Exhausting I know. Now some might say it’s not a big deal, it’s just a birthday or a trip, you’ll have more. Someone actually said that to me and I told them to go hold a fuck off in a corner as far away from me as possible. It’s not just a birthday or a trip. I am someone who has struggled with mild depression and anxiety since high school. It is something I deal with on a daily basis. When I make plans to do something, my anxiety increases and I find myself either bowing out of the plans with stupid excuses or I sabotage them. Then the guilt seeps because I’ve let people down. I have actively been trying really hard to fix this. Making this plan, buying a plane ticket, committing to going on this trip was a big deal for me. I was actually proud of myself. So when it all comes crashing down through no fault of your own, it’s hard. It’s something I can’t really describe. When that gets followed up with another knock, and then another and then another, it’s overwhelming. It’s consuming. You can feel the sadness taking longer and longer to get over and then you get scared that the sadness wont go away but you know you don’t want to go into a depressive state. It’s not fun.

Another thing that adds to the fear is I now have to reckon with the fact that the world no longer feels like it’s mine to explore. I literally cannot enter a whole country. That is mind boggling to me. I can’t enter the US and I don’t even know why. I wont be able to go to other countries because the only way to get there is through the US, either that or I have go through a more expensive route and I don’t make enough money for that to be a simple alternative. Will this have an impact on future job prospects? What if there is an emergency and my family has to travel, where does that leave me? All these implications, I’m not going to lie, it makes me really nervous. I think it’s the not knowing that gets to me the most. If I knew what I had done wrong, if anything, then I could at least work to fix the problem. I’ve spoken to a lawyer who said they will look into it for me. All I can do is hope that he can help and advise me on what to do next.

So that was May. I hadn’t planned on this post being this long but I had to get it out. Do I feel better? No, not really but I promise myself that I am going to do everything I can to make sure May was just a bump and that things get better from here on out. My no.1 priority right now is making sure I am okay.

Thanks for reading/listening. I am open to all suggestions and advice and even anecdotes about times things have just fallen apart for you and how you got through it.

Til next time 🙂