For once a selkie finds her skin, neither bonds of steel nor bonds of love can keep her from the sea
Or
And the sailors say “Brandy, you’re a fine girl, what a good wife you would be, but my life, my lover my lady…is the sea”
The job isn’t glamorous it’s true. Any more than a job as a waitress at the Ritz is truly glamorous. The setting is beautiful and exotic and there are certainly perks, but at the end of the day you still sling on your jacket and trudge on home. Another face in the crowd of commuters.
For me, the biggest advantage of the job isn’t the ports of call, or the wondrous exotic places I’ve seen, or even the people I’ve met (those, I have learned, come and go) it’s the sea herself. She owns me, breathes life into me, and cleanses me of so much of my pain that I often don’t know what I would do without it. One of the reasons my recent relationships have collapsed has been because it’s difficult for my partner to have to “share me with the whole ocean”…
I hit very rough water my first contract out – another of those situations where those of you who were there know and those of you who weren’t (and don’t take offense), don’t need to – and I was told that one of the disadvantages of ships is that the sense of freedom is balanced out by the fact that when you hit the wall, you hit it alone.
I’ve come to realize that that isn’t really true. For one thing, you learn who to trust, and it’s true that sometimes that trust turns on you, but when it does, when the chips are down and you have nothing and no one left except your life packed into two suitcases and a carrier bag? Well, this selkie for one – at the very least, always has her skin…
And woe betide anyone who tries to take it from me…