The Appointment

I got the email last Tuesday. A confirmation. A date. A time. An address in San Francisco where I'm supposed to show up with a folder full of documents to convince someone I'm serious about making Portugal my home.

Though I've been dreaming about this move for years, I only really committed to it a few months ago. As soon as I did, I was submerged in a flood of tasks and bureaucracy that I could focus on: the locale, the lease, the bank account, insurance, the bureaucratic rabbit holes. But I don't think I knew what committed meant until my visa interview appointment landed in my inbox. Everything before this was research, or something I could back out of. That's not to say I couldn't back out now, but everything from this point is real.

And I'm afraid. Not of anything specific, exactly. It's more of a pit-of-the-stomach thing, the kind of feeling that doesn't respond well to logic.

I worry about money, though the truth is that what I have will go significantly further in Portugal than it does here. I worry about health care, though I'm getting private coverage comparable to what I have now for about 1/8 the cost of Obamacare and with the free Portuguese public health system as a backstop. I worry about losing the few close friendships I have, though it's not like they won't visit, and we certainly have Zoom.

I worry most about not being able to find my way emotionally in a place where I don't speak the language, where everything is unfamiliar, where I'll have to learn, from scratch, how to live. Every interaction, except maybe with dogs, will be filtered through translation, interpretation and unsureness that aren’t part of my current life… I just take for granted that I’ll understand and be understood. But, the unfamiliarity is also part of the pull. New streets to memorize, new light to photograph, new adventures I can't even imagine yet.

The next few months are going to be hard. More documents, more timelines, more logistics (I'm in a little bit of a panic about getting Newt across the ocean). There will likely be moments where I convince myself I'm making the wrong decision. What have I not thought of? What could derail me? What if I get there and I just don't like it?

But it's not going to stop me. That much I know.

The appointment exists. Viana do Castelo exists. The apartment at 63 Av. Rocha Paris exists, with its light and its view and its particular quality of quiet that I've only imagined, but already think about constantly.

This is happening. I think.