They withdrew my visa application today.

If you know me personally, then you know I’ve been in a 3 year long, horribly disgruntled relationship with a mining company to whom I sold my dreams for the sake of getting residency in this county. I had tried to leave at least 4 times in the past 3 years, and always went back because the visa was worth it. And today, they withdrew their nomination for my application, and nullified the visa.

I’m not saying I didn’t do anything to deserve this; I haven’t been to work for nearly two months because I had a nervous breakdown every time I tried to go back. Our minds are incredibly powerful tools and I was unable to ignore the doom I faced every time I headed towards that plane. I’ve been deemed medically unfit to attend site, and therefore medically unfit to do my job to their liking, and therefore medically unfit to become a resident of the country I have called home for over 9 years.

I have a sneaking suspicion, or a great big excuse, that I could not overcome my abhorrence of that soulless prison because I was acutely aware that I was waiting for an imaginary stamp that controls how long a person is allowed to be inside an imaginary line. How long are we going to put up with billionaires telling us where we can and can’t go and how long we can stay? Does anyone really believe that our federal governments have any of our interests at heart? Really though? We hired them to work for us, we pay them to work for us, and they make decisions that benefit anybody but us.

I have been “potentially diagnosed” with a handful of various conditions that (may) have caused the myriad of symptoms I exhibited over my lifetime, some as crazy as Epilepsy and some as mundane as PMS.  I have been told I need a permanent course of pill cocktails till death, weekly psychotherapy at $400 an hour, to quit my job, to keep my job, to exercise less, to eat more, to eat less and exercise more! No one knows what the fuck is wrong with me, or right with me, only that I’ve been desperately unhappy in a binding and suffocating agreement, exacerbated by the fact that I was the one who made the agreement.

I can’t say that I’m pleased with this outcome, far from it, but I’m thankful it’s over. I wanted this visa so I could go back to school and learn how to really hone my craft; to better contribute that craft to the world at large. I wanted to be covered by our national health care system to which I contribute two-thousand dollars every year and am not entitled to use. I wanted to be able to freely enter and exit the place that I live without fear of being removed for parking fines or impending war, or knowing someone who knows someone who might occasionally partake in illegal drugs (one of which ironically has assisted me more than nearly all of the above therapies for my “condition” whatever that might be). But above all, I wanted this bureaucratic nightmare behind me, and for now at least, it is. I still have time left on a different visa to figure out how to stay here, so I’m not out on my ass in the middle of the pacific. I’ll find a way, I always do.

Throughout the day I’ve found myself dwelling on all the time I stayed, all the times I tried to walk away and went back, and all the time I wasted when I could have been living the life I wanted. This is a fun exercise for the parasite inside my ego, but it only makes me sad and angry and ever more hopeless. There is no time for hopelessness and no time for this nagging parasite. I have chosen to do what I want for a living, and now I’ve been given exactly what I wanted. Careful what you wish for…

So now I’m penniless, jobless, an immigrant without options and several mental conditions (well it depends on who you ask really – if you ask the doctor in Darwin he’d probably ignore your question then give you a prescription for Prozac based on the obvious evidence that you have a mouth and a mechanism for swallowing things). I am used to getting what I want, because I learned early on that the word WHY is much more useful than OK, especially when you don’t like an answer you’ve been given. I get horribly frustrated when things don’t go my way, and I am presently suffering from a terrible case of self-inflicted despair because I’m an over-privileged over-thinker with very high expectations.

I can’t expect to get everything right the first time, and I can’t expect anyone to understand why I want what I want, especially if I don’t understand it well myself. I am frightened of taking responsibility for my own life because it means I must accept that I have to adjust something when things go wrong.

I am frightened of failure and constantly swerve to avoid it. This usually requires taking unbearably long detours and I still usually end up across the street from where I wanted to be, staring at my intended destination with hostile disbelief at how it dares to sit there peacefully, exactly where it’s always been, without leaping to applaud the outrageous effort I underwent to get (almost) there.

I want to make art, I want to laugh, I want to write well, and above all,  I want to connect to some kind of underlying truth that makes us all feel vibrant, at peace, and alive. I want to help open the channel for that connection to anyone who seeks it, and I want to connect to my true self underneath all this bullshit. Life is a game, and sometimes you get a shit roll, but you’ve always got a chance to redeem yourself – and the will to continue seeking is all that matters.