Earlier in March, I achieved one of my lifetime goals - getting a visa to live and work in the United Kingdom. It took more than 4 years of job hunting, and a year of red tape once I found a job for everything to be settled, but it finally happened.
The date was 4 March, and our visa allowed us to enter the UK anytime between 25 March and 24 April. My fiancee and I figured that moving in a month - on 7 April - was a tight, but achievable timeline. We bought plane tickets, got our dog certified as an Emotional Support Animal (he’s undergoing training daily), hired movers with a nonrefundable deposit, booked a hotel, and started selling off possessions that weren’t needed in London.
Then along came a virus.
10 days after we received our visas, sports had shut down, countries went on lockdown, and the world changed. We’ve been in self-isolation for two weeks, with only short trips outside the house for food and essential moving activities, but with no contact with other people.
By no means is my overseas move the most important thing in the world right now. Listening to government advice, staying socially distant, and supporting the health professionals and those who continue to make our lives possible - delivery drivers, essential government employees, cleaners, carers, the list goes on - is far more vital to the world that two people shipping some boxes over an ocean.
With that in mind, here are just some of the roadblocks that have popped up over the last 22 days:
On 15 March, Delta suspended our flight route from Boston to London; we then had to pay an additional charge (the fare difference) to fly out of NYC on a different date, one of the two remaining flights on the airline from the US to the UK.
Following the Prime Minister’s lockdown announcement on 23 March in the UK, our hotel cancelled our reservation on the 24th, with no refund yet processed.
Our movers cancelled two days before scheduled pick-up after a nonrefundable deposit was paid.
Three dealerships backed out of a contract to purchase my car, with a fourth offering less than fair value for it.
So here we are, in a half-packed apartment, in a state under severe lockdown, with flight tickets scheduled for 10 days from now and no idea if we’re going to be able to pull this off. Oh, and we’re playing Wack-a-Mole with problems (as is the rest of the world) with every press conference and newsflash.
This purgatory between the US and UK during the pandemic is tough. For someone with anxiety, it’s been turned up to 11, Spinal Tap style. In weighing the pros and cons of completing the move, we’ve had to look at whether or not it’s morally right to do it, but also how the US and UK are coping with the outbreak, medical insurance questions, the logistics of quarantining ourselves for 14 days on arrival, the paperwork required to get Peanut on the plane, and how to pay for it all, as well as what staying in Connecticut, a state where neither my fiancee or I have any ties to, indefinitely. And, of course, the decision could be taken out of our hands at any time.
It’s exhausting. Just exhausting. It’ll make a great chapter (or 5) in my memoir one day, but at the moment, I’m wiped out.
As of writing, since the entire world seems to change every 10 minutes, we’re pushing forward, thanks to the support of friends and colleagues. The hope is that we can secure a short term apartment, and then ride out the lockdown in London, rather than stay in/near the US hot zone as the pandemic worsens.
I know there’s no right answer on what we should do - there’s nothing in my life that has remotely prepared me for this. All we can do is continue moving forward until we can’t.