Brandon Held - Life Is Crazy - Episode 22

In this episode of the podcast, the host talks about the importance of starting from the beginning to understand the story. He shares his experience of dealing with the absence of his partner after leaving Brazil and his plans to bring her to America on a fiance visa. They consider getting married to expedite the process. They initially plan to meet in Mexico but change their destination to the Bahamas due to travel restrictions. They face challenges in arranging the wedding and photography services in the Bahamas. Eventually, they book the hotel and flights, with his partner arriving a day earlier than him. He expresses his concerns about her traveling alone. Welcome back to Brandon Held Life is Crazy. We're now on episode 22. And I never really thought to say this before. Maybe I did say it, but I don't recall saying it. If you're listening to this podcast, and this happens to be the first episode you're listening to, the podcast may not make sense to you if you don't start from the beginning. So the idea is to tell my story and discuss my life and its events from beginning to current. And 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 know, 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, you know, just nine days ago didn't exist as far as like, I didn't need this person in my life every day. I didn't need the physical touch of hugging, kissing, everything else. This person, I didn't need that. I didn't have it. I didn't know what it was, and I didn't need it. But now I had it, and it's not there. So the next steps were to, you know, try to get her to America on a fiancé 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. So she just does that really well. And when you say that, you think, what's the big deal? You look something up. You find information. No. 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. You know, she's just really great at it. And so, you know, she had to finish studying for her bar exam. No, I think she did do that, actually, when we met. And I think she took the test or the bar exam, and she found out when we were together that she passed. And so what is so great about that and what, you know, said a lot about her to me and anyone that, you know, should know her or would 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 78% failure rate, not 78% first try failure rate, 78% failure rate, no matter 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. So, you know, kudos to her. She was, you know, using her time wisely for that. She's an incredible academic, more than she even gives herself credit for or even understands. 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, you know, normally something that maybe only took a few months to do in, quote, unquote, regular time was taking years to get done, years. 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, you know. Are we strong enough to stick this out and be apart for years to be together? Because 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. So, 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, you know, okay, if she comes here whenever she gets here on a fiance visa and she's here for 90 days, 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. And so I thought, well, that's, you know, 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. But it really isn't going to change much. So, you know, I asked her over the phone, you know, hey, you know, the next time we meet, would you like to just get married? Would you like to get married and we can get you here faster? And, you know, the way she responded to the proposal of me asking her to marry me, and she, you know, 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, you know, Juliana response this time, which is, ooh, I don't know about that. You know, I have to think about that. I'm not sure if I want to do that. I've got to give it some time. You know, and that took me back a little bit because I wasn't expecting that. I thought, you know, logically it made sense. So I had to give her some time. And, of course, you know, while giving her that time, I'm giving her the pros of why we should do that. And, you know, she's, of course, in her mind coming up with the pros and cons. But in the end, after, you know, a few days, I don't remember exactly how long, she realized the pros just far outweighed the cons. Because, yeah, if we made it through an engagement that potentially took her years to arrive, and she did arrive, there's probably most likely no way we wouldn't get married in those 90 days. So it just made sense to get married and to get her here even faster. So that's the path we went on. And, you know, 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, like it was all set. And then, you know, she had found out through someone that Mexico didn't let everyone in their country. You know, she just happened to overhear a conversation by a doctor that wanted to go to Cancun for a vacation. And he was a doctor. Him and his friends were not authorized entry into Mexico. 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. And so immediately I thought, well, that's not worth the risk. 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 to be able to cancel my airplane tickets. But it was 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, you know, where could I reroute these tickets? What kind of, you know, budget would I have? Would it cost me more? You know, 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. And so I got my limited choices. And 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 ticket. But when I went to the Bahamas to book the hotel and the room and all that, it was significantly more expensive to stay in the Bahamas. So, you know, the increase in price went up quite a bit. So, you know, that was a factor. And then I had never been to the Bahamas before, so I was excited about it. And we were just looking at while we were waiting for this trip to happen, you know, how do we want to do this? So we were trying to figure out how we wanted to get to the Bahamas, how we wanted to try to get married on the beach, you know, all the possibilities of what we could do. We were looking up photographers. We were looking up, you know, finding someone with the authority to marry us, all those things. And sadly, what we learned was it's really, 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, you know, get someone to marry us on a beach. And, you know, 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, you know, they just had these just insane prices for taking wedding pictures. You know, just a dozen pictures or more for the two of us because it's, you know, 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 had these, like, $600-plus price ranges 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 what we'll figure out when we get there. And so 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, you know, it was what it was. I'm a pretty overprotective person. If you've been listening to this podcast the whole way through, you know what I dealt with in my childhood and why that pushed me to want to be a cop initially. And all that just has to do with security and being overprotective and wanting to make sure the people that I love are safe, right? And so it was scary more for me than her, frankly, 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, you know, we're talking, everything's going well, and she's not having any problems. She's not feeling, you know, 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, you know, I throw on some jeans, a polo shirt, and then like some canvas shoes for travel, just some comfortable canvas, you know, slip-on shoes for travel. And I fly out, and I realize that my flight has a very, very short window of, if it's on time, that when I land in Miami, I have 45 minutes until the plane takes off again in Miami to go to the Bahamas. So as everyone knows, you know, a plane board's 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, right? And this was, of course, starting to make me anxious as all hell 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. And, you know, I would have to wait till the next day. And none of that sounded good to me. 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. And, you know, it sure is shit. It takes 45 minutes almost exactly for us to take off from our original departing time. And I'm panicking, you know, where I'm trying not to. I mean, almost the whole time I'm telling myself, like, all right, stay calm. Don't panic. You know, things are going to work out. And, you know, I'm really just trying to talk myself down from getting too anxious and too upset. And so one of the ways I decided to do that was I wanted to go talk to the flight attendants and say, hey, you know, I got, like, literal minutes, five minutes when we hit the ground to get to my gate to catch my flight to the Bahamas. And I'm meeting my fiancée in Brazil, and I have a limited number of days, you know, that I can actually see her. So 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, you know, the whole spiel over 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. You know, 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 kind of 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, you know, flats, canvas shoes on my feet. And I'm like, well, 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. You know, 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. And 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. One thing I certainly hadn't been doing was running. And I had bad knees and a bad lower back from my time in the military. And, you know, 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, you know, probably 20 pounds on my back. You know, it was really bringing me back to the Army days when I was rucksacking with 50 pounds on my back. And 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. And I'm going as far as I can as fast as I can until I'm sucking wind so badly. I'm like, and 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 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, I sprint, and I get through. I get to the gate, and I notice 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, hurry up. And she's like, were you on the flight from Dallas? I said, yeah, but I sprinted the whole way here. You know, 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 like, oh, well, then they're going to miss the flight. And I was so happy to have made it. You know, I get to the plane. I'm sweating. I'm breathing heavy. You know, I'm feeling tingling and numbness and pain all over my body that I didn't, you know, still the adrenaline was flowing through me, but I didn't know what, 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, you know, honestly was maybe at 40% capacity or less, maybe 30%. You know, I really wasn't sure, but I knew there were plenty of rows that had one person in the entire row, my row included. And we're sitting there on the tarmac before we even back out, before we even hit the runway for like 20 to 25 minutes. And I'm just thinking, oh, are they going to let these people, you know, that were behind me that landed from Dallas, are they going to let them get on the plane? And I mean, what, that must be the reason they're not giving us any explanation. We're literally sitting here waiting. But I guess what they were doing was allowing my luggage to catch up or trying to. I'm not sure because it didn't actually catch up. And so after about 20 minutes, nobody else had boarded the plane. And we finally 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 so I was super excited that I had made it. You know, 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. And as I relax and the adrenaline in my body starts slowing down and going away, I all of a sudden realize that, holy crap, my lower back hurts and both of my ankles are killing me. Like they're just in incredible pain. And I had never felt anything like that in my ankles before in my life. And so 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. You know, I didn't do anything to twist or sprain my ankles. So that was odd. You know, 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. You know, I think it's like less than an hour flight, not sure. Flying over this beautiful water, these white sandy beaches. And, you know, 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, like, hey, 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 was like, okay, cool. 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, you know, 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, you know, in the ride, like, you know, 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. You know, she's like a completely different person. So 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. You know, and of course that made me feel really good. Not that she was miserable before I got there, but to know that I could have such a good effect on her like she did on me when I finally saw her. And so, you know, we get to the hotel and I booked the hotel through online, of course, because you can't see it in person. And I get there and I, you know, from the outside it looked fine. But when I got to the room, it was supposed to be a suite with like a kitchen and table and bed. And what it ended up being was this like cramped situation where the table was almost right next to the bed. And, you know, the kitchen, the quote unquote kitchen was this tiny little area. And it was just small and I couldn't believe, you know, for as much as this place was going to cost a night that it was so small. 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, you know, on the positive side just because I'm in the Bahamas. I'm with her. We're going to get married. And, you know, 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. So thanks again for joining and I'll talk to you next episode.