I feel like I’m just banging around like the ball in a pinball machine. I don’t know what to do with myself when it’s just me here. I started sorting the pile of clothes in the spare room, a pile for each of us, and a pile of things we shared. There’s Netflix, but I don’t want to watch any of the series we’ve been watching, that feels wrong. I did a load of dishes. I surfed Reddit for a while, but I found myself saving things to show him “later”. We don’t even know if there will even be a “later” right now.
The worst thing is I don’t have anyone who can come here and keep me sane for a little while. I’m on a discord server with a group of folks from a small subreddit I’m a semi-regular lurker on. I told them what was going on, but they can’t do anything. I’ve posted stuff here, but my 6 readers can’t do anything, either. I don’t really have any real world friends anymore; I lost a lot of online friends just staying with him.
There’s no family that I want to call; I’m not close to any of them. I think my sister would be queen of the “I told you so” group. Dad forgot my birthday was 10 days ago. My mom is 1300 miles away. She texted earlier, and I wanted to tell her so badly. However, it’s not like she could do anything. Plus, I feel like no matter what she’d say to me, I’d feel like it was passively guilting me for my choices.
I feel alone again.
For the most part, I’ve been scrolling through the internet almost mindlessly, looking for something to distract myself from reality. Unfortunately, the reality is that I have no idea what’s going to happen. On one hand, we’re dealing with a felony conviction, which is very serious. It’s pretty much always grounds for deportation. I can’t find anything concrete about what type of timeline we’re dealing with, and only spotty information on getting released on bail.
However, he’s been in the country for nearly 20 years at this point. This means he’s outside the window of automatic deportation in cases that occur within 5 years of lawful entry. He’s had no other legal problems aside from this, not even a traffic ticket. When it came time to choose my benefits from work this year, I kept the legal aid option in place. Even though at that point he’d already finished with the courtroom aspect of all this, I figured it couldn’t hurt to keep it. I’m working on getting an immigration lawyer for him, but it’s the weekend.
I’ve been looking through the bank accounts, figuring out what corners can be cut, should this become a 1-income household. I’ve looked into getting back into an apartment complex we lived in when we first got married, because it had most utilities included. The worst part of the money things is I’m on a biweekly pay schedule, making things really difficult to budget for. Everything is due at the beginning of the month, except for three bills handled around the 20th. Best case scenario, he gets out this week, goes back to work with no one the wiser. We deal with things as the information gets to us.
Worst case scenario, I pack up the cats and some clothes, and start driving.
