A rock, a hard place and a Diamond ring

I have a secret. A secret marriage. A year ago my husband and I just popped down to the Chicago courthouse and said our “I Do’s.” But was that’s it, we didn’t share it with everyone else, I didn’t tell my coworkers or friends or family. We don’t pick out colors, menus or spend $60,000 on a wedding. We don’t wear rings, but at home he’s my husband. It’s our marriage. And it’s turned out quite nice. But it did not start that way.

See my boyfriend is an immigrate, which has left our lives limited in many ways. We were backed into a corner by the government, if we wanted to continue date we needed to get married or he would have to leave the country. So many people face situations like this in their lives. A shit or get off the pot moment. This was mine. We had been dating and living together and knew that marriage would be down the road but we did not feel ready to “be married.” So we filed our marriage license and deepened our commitment to each other.

It’s been a stressful year, dealing with the immigration processes and as an American citizen, it’s been an eye opening experience. The process is HARD, complicated and a lot of work! I’ve spent hundreds of hours of my life filling out paperwork and submitting forms, just to have them rejected and doing it all again. For anyone else that is going through this process, I would recommend hiring a lawyer. I was very anti-lawyer in the beginning. I wanted us to complete everything together because I felt it was really important for him to take an active role in his journey towards becoming a US citizen. We had a wonderful sense of pride and accomplishment finishing the paper ourselves. But with that being said it’s worth the money to have a knowledgeable legal professional there for you.

We took the leap. It was not perfect and it was never how I expected my life to be but they were the cards in fount of me. And I played my hand. Our relationship has only gotten better and I’m hopeful for our future. We fill our lives with love and supportiveness. And in our own time and on our own terms we are going to have that wedding with all of our friends and family there to cheer us on (the government will not be invited).

Write me if you have a secret you would like to share with me.

Thank you to my dear friend Watson for introducing me to Listserve, she’s a wonderful beautiful women who has manager to channel her strength in the last two years and take her own leaps of faith. I miss you. And congrats on the new house.

I love to read, if you have not checked out Goodreads, I would highly recommend it.

And you should add these books to your list.

-Apocalypticon by Clayton Smith – Local Chicago author

-The MaddAddam Series by Margaret Atwood

-The Never Born (Locus Origin Series) by my Icelandic friend Christian Matari.


Thanks!

Bex
Hollo1rs[AT]gmail.com
Chicago, IL

Comments

Post a Comment

Favorites

This is a puzzle.

Beyond this message a challenge awaits; In the listserve, no links are allowed, what a cruel fate! The first clue must be deciphered by ROT 8. . Let me know and just email if your brain needs a spark Your first clue is just after this punctuation mark / dsoqwj vwxwfvafy lge jgtafkgf af lg cadd s egucafytajv Listserve Puzzle listservepuzzle[AT]gmail.com
Read more

21,612 is a lot

Hi, everyone. I'm a teenaged girl. I'm not arrogant enough to think that I know much about the world. I'm 18, a freshman in college, and I struggle every day trying to see into the future: into what might be, where I might go. Recently I've decided that my destiny in life is to be a high-school biology teacher, but ask me again later and perhaps that will have changed. One thing I feel passionate about is body modification. Somehow my standards of beauty have developed in a way that put piercings, tattoos, implants and scarification at the forefront. However, my parents have threatened to cut off their funding for my education if I modify myself in any way. I already have piercings, and though my family will never see them due to their private locations, I would love to be able to share this important part of my life with them and express myself through modification in a more public way. Essentially, they have rejected my lifestyle, and through this, they have
Read more

Tiny wings

Hi all, I want to write about a subject that is very close to my heart - bees! I started bee keeping last year, and have two colonies right now. These two already managed to supply my family and my friends with more than enough honey, and keeping the bees is a tremendously satisfying activity. They smell so good, and are very tidy animals, and are just very, very interesting overall. The insects' way of dealing with the world is just so very different from how we as mammals approach it - it seems almost alien. Anyways, what is probably most impressive is the workload these little animals deal with. For one kilo of honey, they visit 4 million flowers, and fly a distance equivalent of more than 4 times around the earth. Think about that for a second. And then, if you start to think about how they "furniture" their housing themselves by the wax they sweat out, how they can control temperature inside the hive to the tenth of a degree, how they collectively make decisions i
Read more