I have been living this life for long enough that I forget sometimes that other people haven’t. The chaos of embark/debark day is so familiar to me that I seldom really see it anymore, if someone extremely close to me is debarking, then of course I’ll notice (and if it’s Amras, cue the waterworks, but that’s different), but for the most part, people simply come and go and come back again and life goes on. It gets…easier.
It only jolts home to me just how unusual this life is when I see someone else going through the things that I have gone through so often for the first time. Well, perhaps not quite the first time, but the first “real” time.
The librarian on my current ship is new to the company, like all of us she’s far from home and breaking into life on the water, and like all librarians, she’s worn down already by the strain of the job. She’s been on-board for just over a month, and in that time we’ve had about three turn around days, but none of them have been ones that “counted”. Until today, she hasn’t had anyone leave. Today, almost all her “people” left at once. And she’s not used to it yet. Watching her standing there in the hallway, her eyes red from trying very hard not to cry, I just…didn’t know exactly what to say
Everyone’s leaving!
Oh dear, first debark day. Don’t worry hun, it gets easier, before you know it you’ll be like the rest of us…it will hurt less. I promise it does get easier.
But…but everyone’s leaving!
I know…it sucks.
And it does, or at least it used to. I found myself wondering when that changed, when it became something I was so used to. When I stopped grieving for people leaving me and instead realized that there was a high chance I would see them again, and if we were real friends we would keep in touch in between. One of the teammates that’s joining today is someone I worked with two years ago, and the first thing she did yesterday after getting her job requirements organized was to come find me and give me a hug before class. Within a few hours it was as if we had never been apart. The real ones, they stick around.
But it’s hard to explain that to someone who only knows that at the moment she is watching all her friends pack up suitcases and trundle down the gangway.
For my part, I just laced my fingers with Amras’ – he joined today to sail with me for the rest of the cruise – and thanked the universe that I had come so far from being that girl crying in the hallway.