Once again there were hundreds of people around her. But [she] was alone…
~ Pick Me Up At Peggy’s Cove
Strange does not begin to explain the atmosphere on the ship while we’re stuck out here. It really doesn’t. It never really leaves our minds how lucky we are, how fortunate we are to be safe among friends with access to resources that many on land can only dream of just at the moment.
I mean for heaven’s sake we have a hot tub!
But under all that there’s still the pulsing knowledge that we don’t know when we’re going to go home. I was talking to a barista this morning who has a three year old son at home, and she’s both desperate to go home to him and terrified to leave because she doesn’t want to risk him getting ill, and because she’s the only current working member of her family. Without her? How would they eat? And she’s far from the only one.
It makes one think really. All those numbers on paper that the government is so quick to slash red lines through? All those nameless corporations that everyone is so quick to blame (and don’t get me wrong, the mentality of a lot of big corporations is to blame for a lot of problems in this world); those numbers and statistics are real people, they’re lives. Real lives. Lives that have been totally upended and left to drift about until someone tells them its safe to return. There’s so much emotion out here that everything ends up feeling slightly numb.
For the most part, everyone is also fighting boredom. It sounds nuts doesn’t it? Here we are on a ship, with all these activities planned to keep us out of trouble, and no one feels like doing anything. We’re all still just, processing. Waiting for someone to tell us what to do next.
And as for me personally? Well, I never thought I could feel claustrophobic on a ship built to hold over 1,500 people. This morning the knowledge that I cannot leave this vessel even if I wanted to (we’re 20 miles off the coast of anywhere, there’s not anywhere to go!), hit me hard. It’s hard to explain what it feels like to suddenly realize that you are surrounded by endless miles of water and the end of your accessible world is the railings surrounding the promenade deck. It’s a creepy intense feeling that borders just on the edge of a panic attack before you reel it back in again.
Thankfully for me, we do have access to the pool (I know, a luxury that is definitely not on many people’s available list right now), so I was able to spend a little while flat on my back in the water, with nothing in my ears but the sound of my own breathing. And that helps. That always helps.
So, we keep on keeping busy. And allow ourselves the bad days, because we haven’t even been out here a week and some of us are already starting to go stir crazy.
Every night at (almost) exactly 7:30pm, there’s a low rumbling ghostly whistle that echoes back and forth across the waves from ship to ship as every vessel anchored in the area sounds its horn in unison. That gives me hope, that sound. It gives me an anchor. It reminds me that no matter how alone Amras and I may feel out here, we aren’t. A few miles across the water are 600+ other people (per ship), looking back and us, looking back at them, wondering the same things…
We’re still here, those horns say, we’ll get through this.
We will all get through this.
(As always, standard disclaimers apply, please check the “disclaimers” section at the top of the blog page for details)
Love you two.