Sometimes there really is only Before and After. There are events that just split your life in half. Before High School, After High School, before your First Love and after. And for me (and for a lot of the people close to me these days) – before ships and (one day) after ships.
They say you can’t do this forever. That it will wear you out one day, one day you’ll want to stop moving, you’ll want to sleep in a bed that doesn’t rock walk across a dance floor that doesn’t sway. Have a social circle you don’t consistently have to say goodbye to. I know people who can’t WAIT to get back on land. Been on water for too long, away for too long.
Maybe that’s true – but I look at who I was before I went to ships, who I was before I walked up that gangway in San Diego over a year ago, and I wonder what the future would have held for me had I not taken the crazy risk of hitting “send” on the Cruise Line’s website. what was in store for me if I’d stayed “before”. I’m pretty sure I can tell you actually: An endless succession of retail jobs, likely ending up as a secretary somewhere. Stuck behind a desk if I was lucky, behind a counter if I wasn’t. A series of amdram or semi-pro productions with little in the way of professional connections that could gain me a great deal off the island.
One less Sister. One less Brother.
Somewhere out there in the multiverse, that girl exists. The girl who never went to Tahiti, never saw Petra, never met her shipboard family. I wish her luck, and I have nothing against her….I’ve nothing against the concept of stablity.
But in the here and now, I’m content with where I ended up. You can’t after all, go back. There is no returning to before.
This is always a strange time, we’re in the last cruise of the season, and for a lot of us it’s the last cruise of our contract. This afternoon I went through a flurry of packing, everything necessary in my life (except for the pictures on my walls, they go last) is packed neatly into two large hard-sided suitcases. My life is ready for transport.
I look at those two suitcases…and I think….
Yeah…you can’t go back….
But I wouldn’t want to…