My 1st ever adult passport. Guess how long I had to wait for it?
Confession: I never had an adult passport until this year. I know I had one as a child since I remember taking trips to Canada, South Korea, and the Philippines then. As an adult, all my trips have been domestic, with only one trip done by flight, and I flew way before the Real ID requirement. While adult me has wanted to take international trips, they were never within my budget, and so I never bothered to get a passport. Until this year, and it’s not just for travel needs (I have plans on taking a birthday trip to Vancouver). As a Bi woman of color with a look and skin tone that may make “Border Patrol” curious, I felt like having a passport would also give me some peace of mind, whether to prove citizenship or to get TF outta here if I need to. Along with cuts to federal agencies thanks to evil broligarchs, I couldn’t have picked a worser year to apply for my first-ever passport! 😵💫
*Appointment Date: 5/12/2025*
Since my birthday is at the end of October, I had plenty of time to get myself a passport. I applied for Routine processing, booked my appointment in advance (I refused to take a chance with walk-ins), and had all the necessary documents and the $160 money order. A pro-tip: if you need a birth certificate, it’s better to go to the office of vital records of the county you were born in and buy one (or multiple copies, if allowed) there instead of having it mailed to you from the state, if you can. It’s cheaper, no notary service necessary, and you get your birth certificate on the spot. I happen to live 40 minutes from the county I was born in, though I wish I knew this before I applied to get my birth certificate in the mail way back in February this year. (It arrived in the mail in late April; a two-month wait is typical.) I just went to the city hall of my birth county to get more copies, as I needed another one for my Real ID application.
Anyway, back to my passport appointment: I had it at my local post office, and some crotchety old guy looked over my papers and also took my passport photos. We had to do a few takes because the first few photos came out blurry. There’s more on this that I’ll share later. The guy told me to visit travel.state.gov three weeks after my appointment to check the status of my passport application, which would be early June.
So, early June arrived, and I checked the status of my application. I got this:
(Note: this isn’t my pic, but the message was the same. *source*)
I didn’t sweat it. I had well over four months before my planned trip to Canada, and I also opted for Routine processing, so I figured I would see an update by the six-week mark at the soonest. That six-week mark was end of June, and here’s what I saw then:
Same message. OK. I’m still within the 6-8 week processing timeframe. Maybe in the 7th week I’d get an update?
It didn’t help that I was reading other people’s passport stories on Reddit and this site. Some, if not many, were getting theirs on time, if not sooner than me, and they too also applied for their 1st adult passport and used Routine service. When the 8-week mark arrived in mid-July, I found myself checking the status every day. And, I shit you not, I got the same “not available” status message every damn time. I checked to see if my money order got cashed (it did, a week after my appointment). I went to my local post office to see if my application got sent in (it was, to some office in Irving, Texas). I even contacted the offices of my local congressman to help me out (they tried but couldn’t).
Though my travel plans were still over three months away, I began to fret. Did my application get lost? Or was it received but the agency is being lazy in processing it? Why didn’t I apply for a passport two years ago?
You’ll be forever in our hearts and forever missed, Mr. Mays! 🧡🖤
Lex Writes On 