Outside in and Inside Out – Mormugao, India – [03/26/2012]

I am a little afraid to go home, I have been mortal and a part of me is mortal yet. I am no longer like the others…. ~ The Last Unicorn

Or

How do you pick up the threads of your old life? How do you go on? One day you realize…there is no going back ~ The Lord of the Rings

I have been troubled as of late by too many thoughts. Budget constraints and health issues (read: total exhaustion) have prevented me getting off the ship lately, and I’ve spent a great deal more time in my own head. This is a good thing to be honest, I didn’t realize how in need I was of the retreat until it was on top of me.

To that end, I apologize for the lack of port-related entries, its’ difficult to write about places when you aren’t getting off the ship to see them. Right now I look out my office window towards Mormugao, India, and I let my mind drift momentarily with the fishing boats that surround us, wondering where they’re going, what they’re carrying, whether their crews will miss their families, or if their crewmates have in fact become family, as they so often do.

Which cycles me back to too many thoughts…

They say fear is a useless emotion (as my friend Rachelle is fond of saying: ‘fear is a useless emotion unless one is being chased by a saber-tooth tiger!’) , but it remains a very real one, and in some ways, I am truly afraid of going home. Afraid of what I might find there, and afraid of what I might not.

There are some things I don’t fear of course, some things that – for now – remain consistent. I look forward to sleeping in my own bed, but know it won’t really feel like mine, I look forward to seeing my family, but wonder where to start in telling them everything that has happened since I’ve been away.

Where do you start listing the changes when so many of the changes are internal? Internal but visible in the way you act, in the way you carry yourself.

I am reminded of a book I read as a child, called The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, about a girl who went away on a sea voyage and ended up becoming a member of the crew, I forget most of the story, but the opening lines have always stayed with me

When I was 13 my name was Charlotte Doyle, and though I have kept the name, I am not ,for reasons you will soon discover, the same Charlotte Doyle.

It’s impossible to be in this line of work without changing. The sea takes you and moulds you as her own, and you emerge from her embrace reborn every time you disembark. But some contracts, some years, change you more than others. I was asked recently why any of this should shock me, after all, everything that has changed in me has been in me all along, lying dormant, waiting to be discovered. I stumbled over the response, but ultimately managed to come up with the fact that there’s a difference between potential and reality, there’s a difference between knowing what you have the potential to become and becoming it. Potential doesn’t change the girl in the mirror to a woman…reality does.

Why am I afraid to go home? Because I don’t know if I will fit in there anymore. I left Victoria a different woman than I am now, with different ideals and different outlooks, during my time away certain things about me have changed, some very drastic things, the very way I see myself has changed.

Best put…I really am ‘no longer like the others’…and I worry sometimes, that the others will not recognize me.