Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Everything and nothing

Prompted to write an update by a certain person (you know who you are!) I'll explain the current progress with Kendall, at least the bits that won't turn all faces red.
The date has now been set for the visit for August, a period of 9 months to wait. We spend hours a day on messenger, plus letters and phone calls, but not being able to touch her till August means the best part isn't here yet. So, as the title says, everything should happen in August (as Kendall is reliable, unlike the only other American I was scheduled to meet and turned out to belong in the LA equivalent of Broadmoor). But this means my life here is technically identical till then, and for me, anything that isn't going to happen within a few weeks doesn't really exist (unless it's something horrible, in which case I may panic about it), so my life carries on as lonely as it was before, though there is something ahead. How someone like me, who doesn't even like waiting a day for most things can so reliably find myself in situations where even something so good is denied due to circumstances appears to imply life is actually guided along the lines 'We'll show you everything you could have, then present your life in the exact opposite way to how you'd choose it, while doing the opposite for most people you know, so you can see it can be different, but not for you.'

Call this cynical, but looking over maybe the last 10 years nearly every aspect of my life has followed this pattern perfectly. The only high spots were 1) gaining my professional counselling qualification, only to find hardly any jobs available per qualified person (I applied for one job a month over a year or more, and got one interview). 2) meeting my last girlfriend only to have her in hospital after 7 weeks for the next 6 months.

Otherwise I have made my own efforts in ways that were realistic, for business and pleasure. The only thing I hadn't done was speed dating, purely because the only venues were in Central London, which is hard to get to from here, and meant half the people would live too far away. My attempts on the two fronts, work and women have been as thorough as possible, and when I met Kendall, I emailed her over a year ago having seen her picture and website to say how much I liked them. Little did I imagine that out of all the messages I'd sent that this would become the basis of a genuine relationship. I was also totally unaware of the obstacles immigration appear to put on visitors to the UK considering how many we actually have compared to the rest of Europe (ie most of them, and many not returning either). But if you enter officially, they virtually seem to require bail money and a reference from a member of the Lords before they let someone in. I hope my own enquiries will find this to be an exaggeration, and take some pressure of us. OK, that was the update, my 'pessimistic/realistic' side coming out in full (depending which way you see it) but I hope I will be able to give better news on the next update. But the good news is if we could meet tomorrow or next week, we'd both be ready for all the fireworks in Woolworths and would be a true week to remember for both of us.

No comments: