Being Monday, like it is today, and the start of a new week, I've suddenly decided to make this the start of my new life. Clean and fresh, that's what Mondays should feel like. Monday mornings should feel like this pic of North East Scotland.
Why not Monday? It seems like a good place to start. Start Over.
I thought I started a new life when I left the United States last November for Scotland with my husband. "The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry", R. Burns, is a COLOSSAL understatement. Very little of our grand design has gone right for us. For a a bit of background on this journey; he's a Scotsman, a former professional musician and a trained chiropractor (I know, random huh?). And after some seemingly theoretically perfect meetings with an established chiropractor here in Scotland, who wanted to sell his well established clinic to us, our family of 2 and 2 (the two of us and our two Maine Coon cats) decided it was time to start a new life in a new place.
We moved to Scotland! He left behind a job working hard for 12 hours a day, and I left a job working IT support in the medical field (and I left some dearly cherished friends behind that I didn't realize I'd miss as much as I do at that job.)
Let me just say, read the fine print, follow your gut instinct and try heartily not to rely on the word of anyone else but yourself. Sounds like all the lessons you had learned by age 18, huh? I ignored all of them. So eager to leave what I thought was a finished chapter in my personal book, I grabbed on to the means of escaping to this new world and new life and here we are. I had all the hope in this world that our lives were on the cusp of great change. Little did I know...
Thinking life in Scotland was going to be fantastic, I embraced this culture (not so unlike our own really) with arms wide open. But two weeks in, I got a devastating phone call. My mother was very ill and dying in a hospital in Virginia. Life was brought to a standstill. I don't recall eating, or drinking or needing either until well after funeral.
I left Scotland and went to Virginia. I spent some days with her before she died, and I believe she knew she was leaving us. We said all the things we needed to say, I heard what I most desperately wanted to hear, and she passed away while I was in a chapel in the hospital praying my guts out for her. I reckon you could say my prayers were answered. I prayed that God would ease her pain, heal her, and let her heart be at peace. Now, in my little head I was praying that she'd get better, walk out of the hospital and home again. The Big Dude had other plans and there's not a lot you can do about that.
Do I count this as believing our lives were on the cusp of great change?
The word great can mean: (excerpts from http://www.dictionary.com/)
1. adj ~ unusual or considerable in degree, power, intensity, etc.; eg. "great pain".
2. adj ~ wonderful; first-rate, very good; eg. "We had a great time!"
3. adj~ important; highly significant or consequential; eg. "the great issues in American History".
This is just a small selection from the word meaning buffet. See my dilemma in defining my own "cusp of great change"?
Back to my point of a new beginning....I've been drifting through the hours, days, weeks and months since my return to Scotland in December 2008. Seemingly without aim at all, waiting on circumstances to present so that we can get on with our lives. Like the licensure exam for my husband to take so we can start the chiropractic business here. Well, we've got to wait until September of this year - that's right, another 7 months before he can take it. That story and rant is for another post.
I didn't read the fine print before leaving the good old U. S. of A. To get a settlement visa for the UK (that means you're married to a British citizen and want to live here based on your marriage to said citizen) you must apply for that type of visa in your country of origin. And where am I from? America. Where am I living now, with a home and a car and my cats and my husband? That would be Scotland. I'm assuming you get the point by now. I must return again to the US for my settlement visa. I cannot work or go to university without it. Not that I don't want to go home, I do. But the caveat is that the process could take up to three months. 12 weeks. Or in other words A VERY LONG TIME. You have to turn in your passport with your application which means I can't just up and leave if I wanted to, or worse yet, needed to. This brings full circle the meaning of read the fine print.
I cannot change the past. I don't have a Tardis (Dr. Who fans, you'll know what I mean) and I wouldn't want to disrupt the time space continuum. But dang I really wish that I'd planned better. Wish in one hand, poo in the other. See which one fills up first.
One could argue that unfulfilled wishes are heartbreaking. Not the wishing for the Jimmy Choo knee high boots kind. But wishing for a better life and a change for yourself. Wishing, I believe, is healthy. And I'm making the argument that unfulfilled wishes such as my own can be a lesson learned. Albeit a hard one.
I am claiming today as my own. I choose not to play the "why me" card (although I will keep it hidden up my sleeve for emergency calamities only) and I will find a way to make my wishes come true. It's a difficult thing to realize that nobody can make your wishes and dreams come true. Except yourself. And with proper planning, reading the fine print, and a healthy dose of believing you can do something, it can be done.
So there, Monday morning. Take that. I'm starting over. And I plan on getting it right this time.
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