I have the patience of a puppy let off his leash.

At the end of November, I started to get my ducks in a row so that I could apply for residency in Gibraltar. Everyone said it was a shoe in. When I took my application to the Civil Registration Office, I went through it with the very nice and helpful clerk, and she took my application fee and told me to check back in 4-5 weeks, as they were very busy.

I told people about my meeting with her, specifically what she had said as we went though the application, and they all said, “oh, you’ve got it!”.

Four days later she called, apologizing profusely. She said that as I was a non-EU citizen I had no right to apply in the manner I did, and she never even should have accepted my application for filing. Her greatest concern was then how to refund my application fee, a whopping 25BGP (about 44 Canadian dollars).

As if the loss of the application fee was my concern.

In law, we say that my application was denied because it is void an initio – to be treated as invalid from the beginning. I had told a few people that as a Canadian, I did not believe I had the right to apply using the method they were suggesting. But some of the people had expertise in the area (heck, one of them filed residency applications for a living!), and so I deferred to their opinion. Again, screwed by my doubt in myself. I may not enjoy being a lawyer, but I am damn good at it.

So, other options had to be examined, and one of those options included leaving Gibraltar. But where would I go? Back to Canada? Somewhere entirely different? Going somewhere new was tantalizing. But a friend spoke to me harshly. “So you’re going to go and start over again? When are you going to stop drifting? When are you going to make a decision and stick to it? Things don’t always work out on the first try, so are you just going to give up every time the first try doesn’t work? How long are you going to keep avoiding everything? Until you are a resident of nowhere, with nowhere you can legally go? What are you doing?”.

His words hurt. And they scared me. But many of his points were right.

So I gave the options some thought, and committed to try the residency application again.

The application I have now made is not nearly as straightforward and easy as the first one I attempted (which, truthfully, is part of the reason I decided to try the first way, even though I didn’t think it would work). This second application is based on an idea I had back in September, when I thought I would set up a business to run AirBNBs. In fact, I even went and saw a local Gibraltarian named Jonathan to get his opinion on it. He thought it would work, he thought it was a good idea, and told me to come back when I was ready to start on it.

But I didn’t go back. For even more reasons than those listed in my last post, I came to realize the AirBNB idea wasn’t going to pan out, at least at present. And so I was scared to go back to see him, for two reasons.

Number one, I didn’t want to have to admit my idea wasn’t going to work. That’s how I phrase the issue now – before, I phrased it as, “I didn’t want to admit I was a failure”.

As if having an idea that doesn’t pan out makes you a failure! I would scoff at any of my friends who confessed to having such a notion. Even every idea of the most successful people doesn’t turn out!! But here I am, demanding of myself that every idea be a success, and cowering if it isn’t.

Accepting I had nothing to be ashamed of because the AirBNB idea wasn’t going anywhere, I had to face the second reason – I was scared to go back to him and say that I still wanted to stay here, that I wanted to go through with the application, but that I had no idea what I was going to do. That too, felt like failure.

I went and saw Jonathan anyway.

I thought long and hard about how to explain to him what had happened and how I had reached my current status. And when I was done telling my story, I paused, looked at him, and waited. I hoped he couldn’t see the pool of stress sweat in which I felt I sat.

“I still think we can do it,” Jonathan said. He got right into business, dealing with the details, discussing the steps, the pros and the cons. But then he started to get a bit mired in how I could save myself some money by doing certain steps of the process myself, and he started to sound hesitant.

“Jonathan,” I said. “I want to stay in Gibraltar. I need to focus on how I can make a living here. You know the people, the process. I need you to focus on getting this done for me. Don’t worry about saving me a dollar here and there. Worry about the end result. Jonathan. I need you to get me my residency.”

He accepted the responsibility then and there.

As I was leaving, I just about fell over. “You are an inspiration,” Jonathan said.

“What?!” I responded with incredulous laughter.

“You decided that you wanted to leave. You’ve taken the steps to stay somewhere you want to be. Even though its uncertain, you are forging ahead. That’s really admirable. And it’s really inspirational.” He looked deep in thought.

I was touched. And at that moment, I also felt a confidence and a strength I haven’t felt in years.

I committed to reapply. And then I didn’t let doubt enter the equation. Instead of thinking “if” when I thought about the hurdles, I thought about “how”. I prepped for that meeting with Jonathan in a different way than I think I have ever prepped for anything before. There was no thinking about “how to convince him”. There was only thinking about ”what WILL convince him”.

Jonathan may be Gibraltarian, but he doesn’t control the system.

This application method requires me to pass four hurdles, not just one. We are through hurdles one and two, and are poised mid-air over hurdle three. Do we land sure-footed and race to hurdle four, or do we crash out?

If this is the universe’s way of teaching me patience, I could live without it.

I decided to apply for residency here almost four months ago. If you had told me that almost four months later I still wouldn’t know the outcome, I wouldn’t have believed you. We just never know what fate has in store for us, do we?

This last week has been particularly difficult, as I thought that one way or another, the landing for hurdle three would happen this week. Instead I remain suspended in mid-air. I’ve lost heart. And patience.

But here we are, surrounded by talk of nothing but Coronavirus. It occurred to me that if I got sick, the Gibraltar government would probably put me on a plane and ship me back to Canada. I was instantly struck by the thought, “That can’t happen! I can’t get sick, and if I get sick, I’m not telling a soul!”.

Why so adamant? Because at the thought of being shipped back to Canada, I realized how much I want to stay. Coronavirus reaffirmed my commitment to my residency application.

So I have settled back into waiting. And not thinking about the next moment, but living in this one. Truth be told, it is pretty spectacular.

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