Blood, Sweat, and Tears

I think in the US a common expression is that someone really put their blood, sweat, and tears into something. Meaning that they were really dedicated and did everything humanly possible to try and influence, change, build, created, or otherwise affect some kind of result. A quick internet search actually shows the phrase blood, toil, tears, and sweat being used first by Theodore Roosevelt around 1897 and then in a Winston Churchill speech in 1940; Churchill’s speech being the noted origin of the phrase. But I have only hear it used as Blood, Sweat, and Tears (there is also a band with this name). I never took the phrase literally - at least not until recently. Getting a Russian Visa so I could travel to visit my wife cost me just these things. Blood, Sweat, and Tears.

I am not joking about the blood part either. To battle HIV the Russian government has decided that anyone that is going to get a visa that has a duration of more than 90 days needs to provide a negative screening for HIV (I guess only people that are there for more than 90 days might give it to someone else, seriously what is the point). So I had to give a test tube of blood to prove I was HIV free. I took this test last year for my visa as well but it was in a new facility and they didn’t need much blood so it was basically pain free. This time though.. Forget a bout it. They used the big needle, really dug in, and sucked a lot more blood out. They were so rough in fact that the bruise didn’t heal for more than two weeks.

The sweating of course has been constant through out the process. There is a lot of documentation to create, gather, and provide and there are many places where everything can go wrong. The first thing to find out of course is what you need. Well as it happens as I was applying in UK rather than in the US and of course the requirements are completely different. I had to scour the website for the proper form (I did fill out two of the wrong forms before finding the correct on) and spent a few days filling it out. All the time sweating over how honest to be in the form and how much information to provide. I also had to write a letter of intent/introduction to obtain the 12 month visa again sweating over what the correct information to provide was. I sweated over whether or not we could get an invitation from a Russian company. Of course I also needed a bunch of other bits and bobs I had to go searching for. If any of these forms were wrong we could lose the processing fee, the fee we paid for an invitation and countless hours in preparation, so I sweated through the whole process.

Tears came at a few time in the process to. Most notably and least seriously when I saw the line outside of the Russian Embassy in Moscow and realized that instead of needing to spend a morning trying to get a visa I would need to spend the whole day. I also shed a few tears from the pains I developed in my legs from standing all day in very uncomfortable shoes (in retrospect I should have wore trains in the morning and had work shoes in the car for if I did make it to the client). Finally that same day I shed tears of joy when after 12 hours of torment that day alone I received the visa. More seriously of course I have on occasion teared up a bit from the longing for my wife. From being unable to see her for weeks and weeks at a time. This happens normally when I see something sad on the TV or watch a movie that gets sappy. While I may not cry myself to sleep I certainly can’t claim to be totally stoic either.

Keeping with Winston and Theodore I will also say that this has caused me to toil in my cause as well. But it all worth it for those weekends and times that I can spend with RG. And I am sure that I will spend more of my blood, more of my sweat, and more of my tears to get her home as well.