It has been a big week.
I attended an interview at the US Consulate in Auckland. I am applying for a “Waiver of Ineligibility” to enter the USA.
What stops me from getting an ordinary Visa is a raft of drug convictions in the 1970s. I am married to an American and have been for fourteen years. I am not eligible for a Green Card owing to a Heroin conviction from 1974. When I do right no one remembers, when I do wrong no one forgets (Paparua Prison tattoo).
The woman who interviewed me was incredibly warm and this has been on my mind since the interview. She made a recommendation that a Visa be granted and now all the paperwork has gone to Homeland Security in the USA for a lookover. I have been granted waivers before so there shouldn’t be a problem.
It was worth going to the interview in order to get just a little bit of humanity.
I have been depressed for a while, my beautiful daughter, Hope (in the photo attached), died a few short months ago and I myself went through chemotherapy a year back. Franz Kafka said that when one is disturbed one should move one’s finger along one’s eyebrows.
I have regrets about being a junkie. I treated people wrong and I wasn’t able to maintain stable relationships. I was angry all the time. But I did have the very best friends in the world and we laughed at all the absurdities of this life. I’m thinking all of us just wanted the little piece of humanity, to feel warm about people (this comes first) and in return have them feel warm about you.
When I was a kid my mother would sometimes tell me she should never have had me (I was a late birth, my mother was 38 at the time). My father would tell me that I looked like a little mongoloid (this one still sits on my shoulders) and that the trouble with me was that I didn’t want to be as miserable as the rest of them (my family).
So I grew up with a lot of self-loathing and often, even these days, my brain tells me bad stories.
Friendships have been what has kept me going. Friendships have put a little froth in my underwear. People at their best keep me going, it’s not the meds, it’s not the money, it’s having genuine friends and doing good work for others. Love is the most cleansing feeling.
I believe if it wasn’t for drugs giving me the release they did, that I wouldn’t have lived past my twenties. My friends and I were all half-angel and half-pirate.
I love you.
Jim Wilson
