It's been four years since the last February 29th, and those of you with extremely sharp memories (or maybe too little on your minds) might remember the last one. I do. I remember waking up so nervous I thought I would be sick, and chugging peppermint tea; I remember a huge fuck-up with the cab we'd booked that meant that we ended up being seven minutes late for our 10:00 appointment; I remember that it was a 10:00 appointment and that seven minutes late seemed like the end of the world.
I remember sitting and waiting to be called, trying to keep my shit together with that big, fat binder in my lap. I remember sitting in front of a nameless but kindly clerk, nervously sharing the details of my life and trying to make him understand why it was important that I got to stay there forever. Not just that I wanted to, but that it was important. I remember how pleased he seemed with all of the paperwork, and listening to Bel explain how hard it would be for her if we were separated, and hearing him say, 'You're not going to be separated.' With that sentence, those six words, I knew I would get my residency. I had it. I was one of the few who would have it granted on the spot, and it was going to happen, and I would be safe. I would be safe, finally safe.
But as we all know, I wasn't. And in one of those small but inescapable ironies of life, that same kindly clerk was working on the day I went back, about eight months later, to declare that the relationship was over and that I was no longer eligible for that residency. I remember smiling at him in a no doubt fairly desperate fashion; he didn't remember me.
I don't remember the date of that day; I do remember maintaining so hard the whole time I was in the office, and buckling afterwards when I was waiting for the elevator. I remember Tim helping me walk out, and how quietly but deeply angry he was that this was happening to me, that it was just done, that fast. I remember being told I had 28 days to leave the country; I remember sitting on that little built-up patch of grass outside and filling out a tourist visa application so that I could ostensibly buy myself a bit more time, but really so that I could apply for another student visa. I remember feeling like I could fill out immigration paperwork in my sleep, which was a fucking blessing because I was so checked out of my life by that point that don't remember a single other goddamn thing for about a month in either direction, apart from the week in Samoa with Jac that has all blended into one warm, coconut-tasting memory. I actually don't remember much of anything of about a year there, from roughly mid-July until around the following September.
But I remember February 29th. I remember booking the appointment over the phone with a nice young man who clearly thought I was batty but laughed conscientiously along with me when I said that we thought Leap Day would be fortuitous. And it was; it just didn't play out in the long run like I thought it would.
I think the worst legacy of the last few years is my complete inability to trust that anything good can last. I realise that sounds overwrought, but have the rug pulled out from under you enough times, even just in little ways, and I promise you'll end up feeling the same. And I look at the girl sleeping next to me as I type this, with her ridiculously beautiful lashes and her hair all messed up, who smells like warm and dreams out loud, a girl whom I love more than I know what to do with, and I can't help but feel scared to my bones that she'll go the same way as everything else has. I want to grab her and hold on and never, ever let her out of my sight, and maybe if we stay perfectly still everything else will happen around us and we'll be safe. (Again and always, safe.)
But that, of course, is not how the world works. We may last 50 more years or five more minutes, but I'm not going to make a difference in that by trying to keep everything else out. And while a lot of what I do remember was fractures and lacerations, I also remember the hard hard work done by people who loved me, who tried to make my dream come true by holding my hand and writing essays and making me tea and beating me at Scrabble, and who helped me put my life back together by picking me up when I fell and being endlessly patient and making me eat and beating me at Scrabble. So all in all it's a push, but I'll probably still get really drunk tomorrow.
Happy anniversary; now please fuck off for another four years.
