How Lucky – Halifax, Nova Scotia – [09/29/2014]

And when worst comes to worse
And we all know it will
Thank your lucky stars you’ve gotten this far
And tell yourself…how lucky you are!

There are times, as there are always times with every person in every job, everywhere, when I detest my form of employment. I know this may come as a shock to some people considering how amazing my job really is (and it is amazing, that’s never in doubt, not ever), but even we have days when we can’t bear the idea of dragging ourselves out of bed. When life just seems a bit…much.

The thing is, something always happens to snap me out of it. Somehow. Sometimes I just get tired of hosting my own pity-party, sometimes someone says something that makes me laugh so hard I can’t stay grumpy any more, and sometimes…I read the right book.

That last one, that last one is important. And current.

Books present themselves to me, I swear they arrive when I need them. For example, The Mists of Avalon keeps dropping in my lap ,though I am still – as of this contract – refusing to listen to its demands that I finish reading it. But that’s an obvious one, fantasy reads are easy to fall into. Non- fiction though? I never read non-fiction. Why read biographies? There’s always a death at the end!

And then, this book called Some Girls drops into my lap. In the midst of the week I was “allowed” to feel sorry for myself (Amras had just left, my cat was still sick, I was seriously overloaded at work, I was ill, and Toffy had just quit as my shore-side supervisor…welcome to the pity party). I originally picked it up because the subject matter related vaguely to a story I’ve been working on and I figured it would be good for research. But …then I started reading. Here was the story of a girl, once a theatre major, who made all the wrong choices…well, perhaps not wrong, but…reckless, dangerous, and who ended up somewhere…pretty dark.

Don’t worry, that’s not her. That’s not your little girl up there. She’ll never turn out like me.

And something about that pulled me up short. It’s like the whole concept of the railroad tracks that I was going on and on about last summer – any turning along the way and I would be different.

Is my life perfect? Is anyone’s? No. Because there’s no such thing as perfect. But the list of things I had seen and accomplished before the time I was 30 years old spanned 7 pages, and it’s grown since then. I have a family that’s still intact, I have people who love me, I have a job that – while hard, and draining and challenging sometimes – is more rewarding than the counter I would still be stuck behind had I not fallen into where I am. I have a ship-board family that actually takes the time to notice whether or not one of our number is alright. I’m relatively healthy (most of the time), and while my life is complicated…there are…so many roads I could have walked down, so many roads that people like me with pasts like mine have walked down, that could have ended up so shrouded in darkness that I don’t know that I ever would have found my way out.

A long time ago, I read another book, which became a very dear, very old friend, I don’t remember the exact words, but it went something like this:

As the hours went on, I found I let go of a lot of my bitterness. Did it matter that one child with skinned knees was pouty because the world didn’t genuflect every time she walked by? The sea didn’t seem to think so…and as the voyage went on…neither did I.

I…am one of the lucky ones.