Let me forewarn you: This is going to be my 'weepy' post. The one in which I indulge in melodramatic self-pity and sob and shout and shake my fist about.

So yes, it's a little bit like drunk-dialing, I suppose. And I believe everyone should be entitled to do it at least once (or so... let's not limit ourselves. I might end up enjoying it so much that I'd want to make a habit out of it).

As I sit here tonight, I feel drained and defeated. On the one hand, I have so much to be grateful for. For one, I've recently found out that my one sister is coming to visit me! She'll be arriving on my birthday and staying until the 18th of September, and needless to say, I can't WAIT, because I haven't seen her since 2000...

Yes, that's five years.

But that's not the worst of it. I haven't seen my dad in NINE years. My other sister in six years, my mom in four years, my other sis in a year.

This is why.

You've often seen how I refer to myself as an "outlawed alien," and recently many people (more than I could've ever expected, thank you!) responded to my appeal to sign that very naive Green Card petition I had written on my own behalf, but I've never really told you how I ended up being an illegal immigrant in the first place.

So, in case you've ever wondered how a person manages to achieve the same legal status as a Cuban cigar in the States - other than rafting in or outrunning the BCIS (formerly known as the INS) - here's your answer.

Back in 1996, when I was 21 and still living in South Africa, I was a recent graduate from journalism school and found myself working for the press office at the local Egyptian Embassy.

My room mate had just returned from Washington D.C. where she had worked as a nanny. I was forever interrogating her about the States. What is it like? What are the people like? Luckily for me, she had been seeking an audience for some time, so she was more than willing to talk about her experiences with me.

One fine day, after I had moved out and into my own apartment, she phoned me at work, almost too excited to speak. Eventually, I managed to decipher the gist of her news. A friend of the family she had worked for in Washington was also looking for a nanny. Since they had gotten to know my friend quite well throughout her stay in D.C., they wanted her to come back and work for them, but since she'd already 'been there, done that,' she told them about me instead.

"You absolutely HAVE to go!" she said. "You'll have the best experience, and besides, they are willing to pay for your ticket and everything, that's how desperate they are to find someone."

She eventually managed to persuade me. It didn't take very much, mind you, because I'd always dreamed of travelling and living overseas for at least a few years of my life. Since I've always been more of a dreamer than a doer, I recognised this as just the push I'd need to bring at least one of my ambitions to fruition.

So before long (and it all happened really fast... within less than three months) I was in touch with my future boss, and after exchanging a few e-mails, letters and phone calls, the deal was done. They were going to buy my ticket; I only had to quit my job, move out of my apartment and store my furniture, and then get on the plane.

The only time a visa was ever mentioned, was when I asked about how I should go about getting the correct one. My prospective boss was very quick to tell me that I needn't worry too much about such details and that I should just get a tourist visa and get to D.C. already.

I was bitterly, bitterly naive and didn't see any reason to question this. Besides, according to my friend, this family was wealthy and really well connected in D.C. So without much of a hitch, I managed to get a tourist visa valid for one year and on 9 November 1996, I left South African soil. Little did I know for just how long...

The transition from sunny South Africa to a very chilly Washington D.C. was incredibly tough.

For one, I didn't know a soul, so I was incredibly lonely. It also didn't take me too long to figure out that the couple I was working for (by looking after their only son) had not been happily married for a long time. In fact, by the time I got there, their marriage was pretty much on the rocks.

I lived in the house with them and sometimes the atmosphere in that mansion was chillier than the D.C. winter blustering outside.

It was awful. I received a very small salary - far below the minimum wage, which was probably why they never cared so much about my visa status - and I worked way more than 40 hours per week. Some weeks they simply forgot to pay me, and I never had the nerve to remind them. (Yeah, I guess one could say that I'm not much of a business woman.)

After three months of this, and what was probably one of the worst Christmases of my life (during which the FATHER flew into a rage because he hadn't received the gift he wanted!), I found employment elsewhere.

This is where you are probably going to think that I'm making this up, but believe you me, if I really did have such an imagination, I think I would've used it to crank out a best-seller a long time ago.

Even though my responsibilities increased by one child, two dogs, a cat and a few more household chores and errands, and even though my small stipend didn't increase, life with Family Number Two seemed like paradise in the beginning.

The atmosphere in the house certainly felt a lot warmer than I had been used to. Little did I know that they had a huge skeleton in their closet...

Please don't hate me, I swear I'm not doing it on purpose, but all this purging has worn me out. I promise to continue this later.