Life goes on

I have begun to realize as the days and weeks march on just how much Alberto means to me. As I compose this post, I am desperately fighting off a rising level of anxiety caused by my inability to talk with my husband. Part of me understands that I am being irrational as my mind fabricates a list of cockamamie reasons why he is not answering his phone. My rational side insists that I should know by now that the cellular service in Mexico is sporadic at best with many dead zones and frequent outages. My irrational side responds that someone could have stolen Alberto’s cell phone again, there could have been an attempted kidnapping where he lost his cell phone, or that a roving brand of miscreants asked Alberto for a ride then abandoned him miles from any towns in the desert. I’m nothing if not creative when anxious.

Setting aside that train of thought, I am so glad that Monday is over. The only problem is that tomorrow happens to be a Tuesday. Just a few weeks ago during a particularly bad Tuesday I said, “It’s Tuesday; the mechanical, electrical, mental, financial, and emotional epic fail day.” I’m sincerely hoping that Murphy’s Law takes pity on me for a few weeks and gives me some peace. This is simply not a good month for the systematic meltdown of law and order.

Saturday is another meeting of the support group I joined and I’m a little stressed about it. It’s my turn to share the story of my relationship with Alberto. We have 10 years of history to choose from and a thorny subject that is currently center stage in our lives. How much do I tell my group about the story of us? Do they want to hear how we met, some of our problems, some of our joys, or should I just focus on what is happening now? I think being part of the group is helping me cope, although I still feel different from the other women. They mostly all knew one another before the group formed, and have had common factors in the history of each of their relationships. They all met and married their husbands in their respective countries, and the immigration process was significantly different for people in that situation. Lizzy and I are the only two women in the support group who married undocumented immigrants. We even share a history since I met her while working at McDonalds all those years ago. Maybe I haven’t mentioned that I met Alberto while we were both employed there, but I will write more back story tomorrow. I have so many wonderful, some not so wonderful, and a few downright awful memories from the last 10 years.

Even knowing what I do now about immigration and what I would have to go through, I would not change a thing about the man I married. I love him more today than I did yesterday, and tomorrow I will love him more still. The most well-known phrase from The Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” I will never give up those rights, and may God help anyone who tries to stand in my way.