prickles

I f*d up.

I hope I can still go.

Perhaps in my almost two full years of law school, I should have at some point prior to now internalized the lawyer's mantra: always-double-check-your-shit.

Especially the important shit.

Instead, I wholly relied on information from someone else, a non-native speaker working for the organization in Thailand with which I'm interning, a girl with whom I've already had substantial communication issues in the couple of months we've been corresponding, for information about a crucial step in my travel plans. But she's supposed to be a professional! This is her job, to guide us through the process and get us our damn visas. So, at the moment I am visa-less and have less then three weeks to fix this major problem before I depart for Chiang Mai. I'm too scared to tell the program directors my flub. I guess my fear is that they'll tell me I won't be able to get the visa in time and, thus, can't participate in the program.

What if I can't get it? What if it's too close?

Okay, so I wrote to her, the girl. I laid it all out. What I have to lose is my entire summer abroad, right? Only this trip I've been looking forward to, counting on, preparing for, for months and months. So why not be honest abigail at this point. I hope I'm not fucked. I hope it's just a soon-to-be-hilarious bump in the road. I hope to compare this story to other interns' similar situations, and chuckle at our collective incompetence. When I think about it, though, I just want to shake myself. Really? Really? Was I truly that lazy, I couldn't write a clarifying email, or check the Embassy website myself, to make sure I followed the directions? What's especially frustrating to me is that I had this strange but subtle feeling that it wasn't right. After all, how could the Embassy send the visa back to me if I included no information about myself in the packet? The problem was all the paperwork was in Thai, so I didn't know what was there and what wasn't. Regardless, though, it appears now that I should have included my passport in the collection of things I sent to the Royal Thai Embassy in D.C., which, of course, I neglected to learn until this morning. April 26. I leave on May 14. Sooo...I'm in a precarious position. Hopefully the Thai girl from the program gets back to me shortly. Hopefully she says, "no need to worry, I just pulled some strings and oiled some wheels at the Embassy. This is all just a silly misunderstanding; you'll get your visa in time."

I'm waiting.

In some ways, it's so much harder to forgive yourself for your own mishaps than to forgive someone else for theirs. For their trespasses against you. I mean, depending on the mistake, the person, and the offense. Some things simply can't be forgiven, i think. The grudges I've held the longest, with the exception of a select few that I consider to be 'war crimes' in my life, are mistakes I've made that I just won't let myself transcend. I can't forget them, and I relive the disappointment I felt in myself for committing such obvious errors over and over again. For lapsing in judgment. For not doing what I should have. And whenever I do another stupid thing, I have to stew on it.

I'm stewing now, I'm steeped in a pot of discontentment, distress, and prickles. Spiky lizards and snapping turtles and prickly pears. I can't sit still or relax; I'm gritting my teeth at all the horror stories I'm concocting about why this problem won't be fixed, about the ways I won't be able to finagle a visa in time. About everything I could have done to prevent this situation. About how it was all in my control and I let it slip. About how I let my inertia and angst hijack my common sense. About how I allowed myself to justify not doing everything I could to ensure this process went smoothly.

Yeah, I'm pretty pissed at myself.

"And I've been consistent to the fucking dream, and I've paid my dues, just to get them all back. I'm a simple man with simple desires." Skeleton, by Bloc Party.