July 5 - Get Lonely

We reach the album's title track, and every word of it is a body blow.

It's a day to day itinerary of things being done by someone who is alone in the sense of without one particular person. And I've mentioned it before on here but there was a period of my life where that was me.

Several periods, actually, if I think about it. I'm not really counting the ones where I was alone because there wasn't anyone there yet. That's honestly standard for somewhat neurodivergent young people without particular social skills. No, I'm talking about the times where I was alone because one specific person was thousands of miles away.

Even there, I'm dividing time into the times where she wasn't there yet, and the times where she had been there and wasn't any more.

The immigration system of most countries, but especially of the United Kingdom and the United States, is a calculated and industrialised machine for creating sorrow. Even when it's working for things other than malevolent or racist means, its normal operation means that people are waiting in precarity and discomfort to be with the people they love again. And I've done it a couple of times now. The one that sticks with me - the one that I was scarred by - was July of 2010 to October of 2010. Specifically July 16th to October 12, coming up to 16 years now. Because of the way the UK immigration system worked, after getting a job back over here (the collapse of my US career is a very different story) I had to establish that I would be able to support my wife in the UK before she would be allowed indefinite leave to remain. And they wouldn't take a job offer, it had to be evidence that I had started the job. And because bureaucracy is slow that meant three months between me entering the country to start my job and my wife being allowed to enter.

Which meant twelve weeks of trying to put together a home, without one of the people who would be there. Twelve weeks in a city I had never lived in before. The work week was... fine. Survivable. But the weekends...

There are few things more bleak than a day where all that there is to do is to get through it and out the other side. Where every disappointment feels like the final weight that will crush you. Where the person you turn to is the person you can't talk to.

Never again. No matter what happens.