Every contract you do, changes you. Every ship you set sail on, you walk down the gangway a different girl. It’s hard to explain, sometimes the changes are huge, sometimes they’re so subtle that you never notice them yourself. It’s something behind your eyes. The salt gets into your blood and the waves wash over your heart and you find yourself somehow different. You become a person who changes with the tides.
I didn’t expect to change at all this contract. This is the Alaska run, it’s the cruise ship version of Groundhog Day, it doesn’t change from week to week, you start to measure your days by what port you’re in, and what’s on the menu (Sunday=Sea Day=Beef Wellington), and your nights by what style of music your adopted ‘family’ in the party band is playing (Monday = 50/60s prom). My last contract changed me so so much, that I didn’t really think I had anywhere left to go. I was wrong, apparently.
In truth, this ship didn’t like me to begin with. I’m not sure why that was, it might have been the management, it might have been something else altogether, I never really did figure it out. But as the weeks have gone on, this ship and I have settled into a rhythm wherein we sort of accept each other. She’s never going to be my home ship, but that’s to be expected. The long and the short of it is: I’ve become a very happy woman on this ship. I’m not quite sure how that happened, especially since I didn’t think myself particularly miserable before – but now? Even my mother is commenting on how nice it is to see me actually happy, not pretending, not faking it, actually happy. Actually moderately comfortable in my own skin.
Perhaps it’s something to do with Alaska, because I think this process started when I started on ships – which was a year ago on almost this same route. I look back now and instead of seeing a lot of “might have dones, should have done’s what would have happened if I’d…” I see “Ye-ah, I did that.”
It’s a good change.
Some of you who read this now are recent additions, and haven’t known me long. Some of you I’ve only met this contract – rest assured, the me you know, isn’t the me that walked up the gangway in San Diego last year. That girl…there were a lot of things she would never have done. She would have had the nerve to be a party band groupie for one thing, would never have inserted herself into a social circle for fear that she wouldn’t be accepted, would never have thought to voice her ideas a programming meeting, would never ever have thought she would one day be on her way back to the Grand Voyages.
When I was younger, I used to look in the mirror and wonder who I would have been if a lot of things hadn’t happened, if I hadn’t made some choices, or if those choices hadn’t have been made for me. We are made from are choices after all, but if those choices are taken away from us – who do we become? I used to wonder who I would be if I could ever peel away the layers.
I’m far from saying that the salt air has blown all those layers away – but it’s come close.
Me and my Buffy references, there’s a scene for this too:
“Take all that away and what do you have?”
Claps her hands atop the sword blade and wrenches it aside
“Me.”
I think, after 20 or so years of searching, I’m finally finding “me”, moreover…I think I like her.
My apologies, it’s late on a sea day, and it’s put me in a pensive mood. It seems to be a habit with me on Sunday evenings, as much as mac n’ cheese is on Juneau days.
For now though, I remain,
Ever yours,
Shaughnessy
Were are who we have been, and the sum of our experiences and environment. The what ifs are only good for exploring fiction.