Life Update: What Is Mine, Is Yours
our home.
It’s been a while since the last life update, and boy has a lot of things changed during that time. In May, I was talking about my three-year anniversary of being together with my girlfriend. Right now, about three months later, the thing we have been waiting for for all these years has finally happened. My girlfriend has moved to Finland, to live with me permanently.
The way everything transpired was very unfortunate, and we have been facing obstacle after obstacle in our endeavors of making this a real, proper living situation for us. We were supposed to plan everything ahead and file in all the paperwork for my girlfriend’s residence permit when they were still living in the US. But due to a whole lot of crises, we had to wing the whole thing pretty spontaneously. Mid July, I told my girlfriend that I thought it would be best if they came over here for a while. They agreed to my suggestion, and I bought them a one-way plane ticket to Helsinki. Back then, neither one of us knew how long of a visit this was going to be, what our lives would end up looking like due to this impromptu visit. And then, it turned out to be something completely different from our regular visits.
Even though this was not the way we initially planned things to go, the outcome was one we had always wanted. This was always supposed to happen, and the fact that it happened under extremely unfortunate and downright dangerous circumstances doesn’t take anything away from that. This past month has been amazing, even with all the financial struggles we have been facing—this is what we want, what makes us happy individually and as a couple. Living together with them has definitely proven it to me multiple times by now that I was always meant to be with my girlfriend, to find them, to love them, and to share my life with them.
Thinking back on my first relationship and me living together with my ex, the difference compared to the current day could not be clearer. It’s so funny how everything you didn’t know about relationships and living the couple life just comes naturally to you when you are with the right kind of person. My nervous system was going haywire when I lived with my ex because I was never supposed to live together with a man. My body knew before I did, that what I had going on back then just was not good for me, was not the right choice for me. And suddenly, the worried exclaims from my mother when I told her I was about to go on a date with a guy make so much more sense to me. She saw her lesbian daughter making a huge mistake, but she couldn’t say that to me in that moment. It’s something you have to figure out on your own, unfortunately. But I’m so grateful that I finally did, so now, I get to live with the person who I want to spend the right of my life with.
The change to everyday life has been drastic, and it will take some time to get used to things. The Finnish Migration Services (more disrespectfully known as Migri) are an organization causing us most of our troubles currently, because immigration has been turned into a case of severe paper war between the immigrant and the system. It’s going to take us some time to get everything sorted, and with the way things are money-wise, it is going to be a painful process. But at the end of the day, however long it takes, how difficult it all turns out to be, one thing I do know for certain.
This is the best decision I have ever made in my life, and it is worth every single sacrifice in the book, without questions.
Cheers to a new life,
ichigonya