Touching Normal – Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala – [05/04/2017]

Distance hurts. A lot. And sometimes, just sometimes, the brief glimpse of normal that you are gifted in between the distance stings as much as it heals.

Amras and I are on separate ships this contract. I haven’t seen him since the limo dropped me off at the airport in Fort Lauderdale just after Christmas. This…has not been easy. Being away from your other half is always difficult, is always a rollercoaster. We’ve made it work of course, because that’s what we do, but that doesn’t mean it’s been easy. The ship I’m on is one that prior to this I have only shared with him, and the ship he is on is well…the flagship. Which, ironically, I would be perfectly fine handling myself since I’ve worked it by myself on so many occasions.

We had thought that we wouldn’t see each other until much later in the summer, until I happened to run into our old manager, who told me that we in fact would have one cross port, just one. In Guatemala of all places. A brief blip on the itinerary where my ship is heading east and his is heading west and we just happened to run into each other in the middle…

Which is why 8:30 found me waiting on the gangway, in full dress uniform (which normally I would not consider wearing until after six at night) with butterflies in my stomach the sizes of small moths.

This is ridiculous, why am I nervous?

Couldn’t come up with an answer to that question, but I was. My cruise director looked at me and asked if I was waiting for my counterpart from the other ship – that is to say, the computer teacher from over there, as it’s not unusual for those of us in the same position to meet up and chat if we cross ports. I just looked at him.

Nope, waiting for my boyfriend

Amras is over on the flagship? I did not know that!

Yeah. Seriously, I’m in the six o’clock uniform at 8 in the morning, with make-up, and curled hair…do you think I’d do that for just anything?

I…probably should have picked up on that.

The shuttle from ship to ship to substantially longer than we had though, which led to me almost starting to pace in circles. Too much nervous energy. Finally though, he walked through security, and handed me a vase of roses, which came very close to making me cry…

That brief…ever so brief…little taste of normal.

It was a quiet day, there were problems with my IPM which led to us not being able to visit the flagship until much later in the afternoon, at which point most of the other friends (of which I have quite a few on the flagship, for perhaps obvious reasons)  so we mostly sat and sipped fruit drinks and ate ice cream and just…talked. Just existed. It’s amazing how much you can miss someone to just exist with. It doesn’t have to be bells and whistles and fantastic things, it can just be…normal. The feeling that you will wake up the next morning and that person will be there. Because that’s just the way the universe is supposed to be.

The thing is, the port call was only seven hours…if that. That’s not enough, not really. That’s enough to touch normal and have it slip through your fingers…when you get back from it, the cabin feels empty again…and while you’re refocused and you’re happy, you’re also a different kind of lonely. And when the day was over, and the ice cream dishes cleared and the glasses empty, he dropped me off at the shuttle, and my ship went one way and his went another…

Somewhere along the line I have lost the ability to be alone…or perhaps I have realized that I was only good at it because I thought I had no choice.

Which is perhaps why it’s important …to touch normal, once in a while.