Episode 22: What Would You Endure for Love?

Brandon continues his love story where he left off, dealing with the heartache of separation from Juliana and navigating the challenging process of bringing her from Brazil to America during COVID-19 travel restrictions.

Please start with Episode 1. Go to my site BrandonHeld.com

• Discovering that spousal visas process much faster than fiancé visas during the pandemic
• Making the practical decision to marry rather than pursue a lengthy fiancé visa process
• Changing travel plans from Mexico to the Bahamas after learning about potential entry restrictions
• Struggling to arrange wedding details remotely in the Bahamas without local contacts
• Sprinting desperately through Miami airport with minutes to spare after flight delays
• Reuniting with Juliana in the Bahamas despite physical pain, missing luggage, and disappointing accommodations

Intro

Dynamic Content Middle

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:24

Welcome back to Brandon Held Life is Crazy. We are now on episode 22. The idea is to tell my story and discuss my life and its events from beginning to current. If you just are starting in the middle, it's not going to make sense to you. It may not resonate with you because you're missing some information from The previous podcast. So please go back to podcast one and start from the beginning. And so last time I left off where I had left Brazil, meaning the love of my life. And now I was going to have to deal with this new absence in my heart. This thing that just nine days ago. didn't exist as far as I didn't need this person in my life every day. The next steps were to try to get her to America on a fiance visa. And we started that process and Juliana is an incredible researcher, just incredible. Like no one I've ever known. It probably behooves her as a lawyer. To be an incredible researcher, she just does that really well. She knows how to go unconventional routes and get to people to get information that you can't just find online, that you can't just find somewhere. She's just really great at it. She had to finish studying for her bar exam yesterday. No, I think she did do that, actually, when we met. I think she took the bar exam and she found out when we were together that she passed. What said a lot about her to me and anyone that should know her is that she passed the bar exam and there are two exams on the first try. First try. Those bar exams have a no matter what. how many tries people are on in the room, it's really hard to pass. And she passed two different bar exams on her first attempt. Kudos to her. She was using her time wisely for that. She's an incredible academic. And so she was doing research and learning about the fiance visa and finding out the process and what everyone's going through during this COVID time. And something that maybe only took a few months to do in regular time was taking years to get done. And she's telling me this information to not just prepare me, but prepare her, prepare us both mentally. Like we have no idea how long this thing could drag on. Are we strong enough to stick this out and be apart for years to be together? Cause I can't move to Brazil. And so that was now a thing that was in my mind that I needed to worry about. And during our research, we learned that spousal visas get approved much faster than fiance visas. Like the true real way to get her here as quickly as we're possibly going to get her here is to get married. And so after giving that some thought and thinking about if she comes here on a fiance visa, we have 90 days to be together and get married or decide not to get married. And as amazing as our eight days were together, I couldn't imagine that she would come and we would do anything else that we wouldn't get married. Getting married and trying to get her here is really no different than doing a fiance visa. It gives you a small window to back out if you say something doesn't feel right or something doesn't feel comfortable. I asked her. over the phone, hey, the next time we meet, would you like to just get married and we can get you here faster? The way she responded to the proposal of me asking her to marry, she seemed pretty excited about that and she said yes to that pretty quickly. I thought I'd get the same response on the marriage idea. But I didn't. I got the true Juliana response this time, which is, ooh, I don't know about that. I have to think about that. I'm not sure if I want to do that. That took me back a little bit because I wasn't expecting that. I thought logically it made sense. So I had to give her some time. And of course, while giving her that time, I'm giving her the pros of why we should do that. She's, of course, in her mind coming up with the pros and cons. But in the end, after a few days, I don't remember exactly how long, she realized the pros far outweighed the cons. Because if we made it through an engagement that potentially took her years to arrive, there's probably... No way we wouldn't get married in those 90 days. So it made sense to get her here even faster. That's the path we went on. We set up to initially travel to Mexico to meet. And then we were going to get, because this time I wanted to meet somewhere else, have a different destination, get her out of Brazil. And so book the tickets, book the hotel. It was all set. And she found out through someone that Mexico didn't let everyone in their country. She just happened to overhear a conversation by a doctor that wanted to go to Cancun for a vacation and they flew all the way there. And they got rejected at the airport by the Mexican authorities. And they had to turn around and come back to Brazil. And so she looked into that after she heard about that. And she realized there's a good chance I could maybe not get in to Mexico. And I won't see you there. We won't get married. None of that will happen. Immediately, I thought that's not worth the risk at That's not a risk I want to take. So we have to cancel that trip and do something else. Now, this wasn't within the window of canceling the hotel because I had until days before arrival to cancel the hotel. So I canceled the hotel immediately and I called the airline to see where could I reroute these tickets? What kind of budget would I have? Would it cost me more? What are the price differences? All the financial parts of trying to go somewhere else and do something differently, even though the tickets were already paid for. Where we ended up deciding to go was the Bahamas. Now, it wasn't really going to cost me much more in flights or plane tickets. But when I went to the Bahamas to book the hotel and the room, it was significantly more expensive to stay in the Bahamas. The increase in price went up quite a bit. That was a factor. And then I had never been to the Bahamas before, so I was excited about it. How we wanted to get to the Bahamas, how we wanted to try to get married on the beach. All the possibilities of what we could do. We were looking at photographers, finding people. someone with the authority to marry us, all those things. Sadly, what we learned was it's really difficult to get in touch with anyone in the Bahamas when you're not in the Bahamas. So we were trying to get everything set up, get someone to marry us on a beach. We just couldn't get in touch with anyone that would schedule that and want to do that. And then we called some photographers and they just had these just insane prices for taking wedding pictures or just a dozen pictures or more for the two of us because it's a destination wedding for the two of us no other family or friends would be joining us it's just the two of us and they just the they had these like 600 to plus dollar price ranges and for these pictures and so I just couldn't find anything to book and so we were really flying to the Bahamas to meet in a few months just basically on we'll figure it out when we get there and by the time we had rerouted the tickets and rerouted the hotel and the way that everything worked out she only had so many options for flying out of Brazil there just wasn't a lot of daily choices for flying from Brazil to the Bahamas. And I had my leave set up already for certain days. And so by the time we did all that, we had to book the hotel a night earlier and she had to arrive a night before me by herself and wait for me to arrive the next day. So neither one of us loved that idea, but it was what it was. I'm pretty overprotective person. If you've been listening to this podcast the whole way through, what I dealt with in my childhood and why that wanted pushed me to want to be a cop initially. And all that just has to do with security and being overprotective. And it was scary more for me than her that she was going to be going to the Bahamas without me all by herself and be there. basically about 24 hours before I get there and so she gets there everything's fine we're talking everything's going well and she's not having any problems she's not feeling in any danger she's enjoying how beautiful it is there and so then the next day I leave to take my trip to the bahamas and i just i throw on some jeans a polo shirt and then like some canvas shoes for travel just some comfortable canvas slip-on shoes for travel and i fly out and i realize that my flight has a very short window of if it's on time that when i land in miami I have 45 minutes till the plane takes off again in Miami to go to the Bahamas. So as everyone knows, all plane boards about 30 minutes prior to takeoff. And so 45 minutes was really just not a lot of time to spare. And so I was on the runway in Dallas waiting to fly to Miami. Everything was on time. Everything was going smoothly. And then the next thing I know, we're sitting on the runway in line in Dallas waiting to take off. Starting to make me anxious and worry me that I was going to miss my flight from Miami to the Bahamas because it was already the last flight of the night by the time I got in Miami. So if I didn't get there, I would have to stay overnight in Miami and she would be alone another night in the Bahamas. I already missed her so much. I already didn't like her being there alone. And I'm freaking out. We're just sitting on the runway in Dallas waiting for this flight to be cleared to take off. It sure is shit. It takes 45 minutes almost exactly for us to take off from our original departing time. I'm panicking. I'm trying not to. Almost the whole time I'm telling myself like, all right, stay calm. Don't panic. Things are going to work out. And I'm really just trying to talk myself down from getting too anxious and too upset. So one of the ways I decided to do that was I wanted to go talk to the flight attendants and say, hey, I got like literal minutes left. Five minutes when we hit the ground to get to my gate to catch my flight to the Bahamas and I'm meeting my fiance in Brazil and I have a limited number of days that I can actually see her. A lost night is a big loss for us because we already don't get to see each other very much. And so they were cool about it and they gave the whole spiel over the the speakers for everyone on the flight that when we land to let the people that are going to the Bahamas to the front of the plane so they can exit and be the first to leave. And so we landed. We took our time, of course, getting up to the tarmac and getting our door opened where we could get out. And I was literally the first one out of the plane. First one out of the plane. First time that had ever happened. And I'm fast walking my way through the tunnel to get into the airport. And I get two, three steps into the airport. And I hear over the loudspeaker, last call for anyone boarding a flight to Nassau, Bahamas. Last call. We're going to be closing the gate. Last call. And so now I have this backpack on my back. And I have these vans, flats, canvas shoes on my feet. And I'm like, there's no fucking way I'm missing this flight. So I find out the boarding gate, which is literally on the other side of the airport. I was in C something or D something. I don't even remember anymore. And I had to get all the way to A something. So I start sprinting it. Now, mind you, I'm not in great shape yet to this point. I've been working out and I've been trying to get in better shape. But I had mostly been doing that by lifting and walking. I had bad knees and a bad lower back from my time in the military. And just also from being sedentary when my health wasn't good. And now all of a sudden I'm sprinting my ass across the Miami airport with probably a 20 pounds on my back. It was really bringing me back to the army days. I was in army boots, but I wasn't sprinting. We did run sometimes, but it wasn't a sprint. It was a jog, but I'm literally sprinting. And I mean, going as fast as I can until I'm sucking wind so badly. I'm loudly sucking wind in the airport, running down the hallways and people are looking at me like I'm crazy. But I didn't care. I had one goal in mind, and that was to get to that terminal so I could board that flight on time. And so I sprint and I get through, I get to the gate and I noticed the door hasn't closed yet. And I was so excited. And I get there and the lady sees me running and she's like, all right, come on, hurry up. And she's like, were you on the flight from Dallas? I said, yeah, but I sprinted the whole way here. I doubt anyone is going to be right behind me. It's going to take some time for everyone to get here. And they were just basically, oh, then they're going to miss the flight. And I was so happy to have made it. I get to the plane. I'm sweating. I'm breathing heavy. I'm feeling tingling and numbness and pain all over my body. that I didn't, still the adrenaline was flowing through me, but I didn't know how that was going to affect me, but I knew I had made the flight. And so she lets me on and she closes the door almost immediately behind me. And so I go and I get on the plane, which honestly was maybe at 40% capacity or less, maybe 30%. I really wasn't sure, but I knew there were plenty of rows that had one person in the entire row, my row included. We're sitting there on the tarmac before we even back out, before we even hit the runway for 20 to 25 minutes. And I'm just thinking, oh, are they going to let these people that were behind me that landed from Dallas, are they going to let them get on the plane? That must be the reason. They're not giving us any explanation. We're literally sitting here waiting. And so after about 20 minutes, nobody else had boarded the plane and we start backing out to make our flight to the Bahamas. And I think, huh, that's weird. We sat there for a long time. Nobody else boarded and we're just now taking off. And I was super excited that I had made it. I knew that Juliana wasn't going to have to be alone for another night, that I wouldn't have to stay the night in Miami. And so I kick back and I try to relax knowing that I made it and it's just a small flight to the Bahamas, slowing down and going away. I all of a sudden realized that, holy crap, my lower back hurts and both of my ankles are killing me. Like they're just in incredible pain. I had never felt anything like that in my ankles before in my life. I didn't know what I had done or what was happening to me. I was trying to think like the whole time I was running, I didn't roll my ankles. I didn't do anything to twist or sprain my ankles. So that was odd. I thought my knees would hurt and they did a little and I thought my back would hurt and it did. But I had no idea what the heck was going on with my ankles. So I arrive at the Bahamas. I think it's like less than an hour flight. Flying over this beautiful water, these white sandy beaches. And I land. And when I land, I go to the luggage area for my luggage. It doesn't arrive. I have to go to luggage claim and let them know, okay, my luggage didn't arrive. This is where I'm staying. And they said they would bring it to me the next day when it arrived. And I finally leave the airport to see Juliana for the first time in months. And I was so happy and so excited to see her, but I was also in so much pain at the same time that I was trying to ignore it. And I was trying to not let it be a thing that was a problem for us since I was now in the Bahamas with her. for the second time that I was going to see her and this was our trip that we were going to get married and the taxi driver that had picked us up even commented in the ride on the way here I was trying to talk to her and she was so miserable didn't want to talk and now that she's with you she's so happy she's like a completely different person he was like You can tell this girl, she really loves you because she was like two different people from when you weren't here versus now that you're here. And of course that made me feel really good. And so we get to the hotel and I booked the hotel online, of course, because you can't see it in person. And I get there and from the outside, it looked fine. But when I got to the room, it was supposed to be a suite with a kitchen and table and bed. So now I arrived to this disappointing hotel room in pain with my ankles hurting, not knowing what's going on there. But I see her and I'm with her. So the counterbalance is on the positive side just because I'm in the Bahamas. I'm with her. We're going to get married. And everything was going to be all right. Or so I thought. So... The next episode, I will continue from there and I will let you know what happened in the Bahamas and more. Thanks again for joining and I'll talk to you next episode.