My Old Girl – [07/15/2020]

Posted on July 15, 2020 by GypsyShaughnessy

And why do they always say
Don’t look back?
[…] Don’t hold on to the past
Well that’s too much to ask

9 years ago I walked shaking up the gangway of the flagship, excited and terrified all at once. I didn’t know what I was getting into. I didn’t know that myself and that ship were about to enter a nearly decade long relationship that would have a massive impact on my life .I didn’t even know that walking up that particular gangway with only two contracts under my belt was practically unheard of at that time.

I was just a kid, who figured that going around the world? Sounded pretty amazing.

Who would have known then that I would keep coming back…and back…and back….

5 times, 5 times I circled the world on that ship. 5 times over the horizon and back again. She took me places that I never thought I would reach. She sailed me to Jordan, to Rome, to the Holy Land, through China and to lemurs in Madagascar. She was what I came home to soaking wet in Tokyo on my 30th birthday, and it was her phone lines I nearly wore out when my family was in trouble.

I built almost her entire library from the ground up. I knew every inch of her except for the engine room and the bridge.

I both loved the flagship and hated her. There were many times I felt like I was very good for her, but she wasn’t good for me. That said, she was…in some ways…home. Of all the ships in the fleet, she had a massive part of my heart. I figured she always would. I always thought – before the world erupted into chaos – that one day I would go back to the flagship. My separation from her was always…temporary…

Except, this afternoon I found out that it wasn’t.

Many many companies are selling many many ships to try and get out of this terrible situation. The flagship…my ship… is on the list; she’ll be leaving the fleet in the fall. Before I ever get a chance to walk her decks again.

No ship’s reign lasts forever; but when I got the news this afternoon my heart broke more than a little. It never ever occurred to me that it would come to this.

This evening Amras and I stood and toasted the ocean and thanked her – and the others that are leaving – for the memories, good and bad…they will be missed.

And a little part of my heart…will go with her, wherever she ends up.

Goodbye old girl…

 

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The Length of the Race – [07/05/2020]

Posted on July 5, 2020 by GypsyShaughnessy

Don’t waste your time on jealousy
sometimes you’re ahead
Sometimes you’re behind
The race is long…and in the end? It’s only with yourself.

Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s

~ Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)

The other day I was standing at the cash register, feeling like any other day. A little grimy, a little tired, and – these days – a little lost.  But – for the most part – fairly normal.

And in through the door walks an old family acquaintance, the sister of a dear family friend I pretty much grew up with. And she looks basically the same way she always has, but with her is this other woman; who looks… perfect. Put together, confident…honestly who looks like the cover of a fashion magazine.

You remember my daughter don’t you?

And I blink. And suddenly, I feel about….two hundred years old. It’s not jealousy exactly it’s…this bizarre inferiority complex. I remember this girl as being a bratty toddler who annoyed me when I was a tween (I probably have the age difference off there, but it’s what I remember); and now, here she was this…perfect looking girl. Suddenly all these self-doubty thoughts crowded in on me: You’re almost forty and here you are behind this counter, what on earth have you done with your life? Why didn’t you make better choices? Did you even bother to do your hair this morning? Why didn’t…why didn’t…why didn’t.

Which is so STUPID.

What have I done with my life? I mean come on! I’ve published three books, I’ve learned countless new hobbies, I had traveled around the world five times before my thirtieth birthday. I’ve stood in the shadow of the pyramids, climbed the great wall of china, I’ve run an entire classroom on my own, I’ve trained other people to do a job that I almost rebuilt from the ground up. I got married, I have a happy relationship. And the only reason I am behind that counter is because I have a super strong work ethic that has allowed me to bounce back and forth into retail for over twenty years – which means I have a strong back up plan for emergencies. It’s not always easy, it’s not ideal, but it means that in the midst of a global crisis I am in a strong enough and smart enough position to not have be truly afraid – because of the ground work I laid years and years ago. Tired yes, but afraid no.

So yes, I have accomplished a lot with my life, and I am still accomplishing things.

Comparing myself to this woman, who I no longer even know, and certainly know nothing about is…nonsensical.

So why do I bring any of this up? Why do I mention this whole silly incident at all? Well, it’s because it taught me something.

We – as people – have a general conditioned tendency to compare ourselves to others, and we usually measure ourselves short. We look at another person and too often see everything that we are not. Everything they have done that we haven’t. That’s…foolish. No matter who you are, there is only one you. True, it’s possible – hell even likely – that your life hasn’t gone the way you thought, but that doesn’t mean that you are any less than anyone else. Your life is your own. Your choices, your accomplishments; and just because those choices and accomplishments are different than someone else’s? It doesn’t mean that you are worth any less, or that you are any less amazing as a person. No matter how broken or battered you are or feel, you are worth something, you matter. What does not matter is what someone else has done with their life; you can’t change that, and you shouldn’t judge yourself because of it.

In short? Go easy on yourself…

Remind yourself once in a while that yes, the race is long (though not as long as we think), and in the end? It really is only with yourself.

 

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Wheeled Freedom and Healing Shadows – Victoria, BC – [07/01/2020]

Posted on July 1, 2020 by GypsyShaughnessy

Get on your bikes and ride!!
~ Queen

At least two years ago – I can’t remember the exact date – Amras and I were on a bike-pulled tuktuk ride somewhere in South America (yes I know..), and I turned to him and told him that one day, one day he and I would have bikes; and we would be able to ride anywhere we wanted to go together.

yeah…that would be awesome.

We said.

It was one of those small things that I consistently daydreamed about when I thought about leaving the waves and being just “normal”. You don’t really think – most of the time – that those things are going to happen any time soon.

Fast forward. Two years later. Endless combing through various second hand markets, countless disappointments (including about two days worth of back and forth emails to the bike shop) and I think four bus rides…and…there are two seriously brilliant vintage style cruiser bikes sitting our entry way! Mine a super dark emerald metallic green that I have nick-named ‘Sera’ (because it’s a Serenade) and his an eye-catching (one might almost say eye-popping) Kelly-green that I can’t even sit on because it’s that much too big for me.

It’s a small thing that isn’t that small. We are in absolutely no position to afford a car, I mean heck I don’t even have a driver’s license (though that will likely finally change in the near future), and having a set of wheels ; even just two wheels, brings a sense of freedom and independence that actually surprises me. I will definitely say that riding to work every morning is a lot less stressful. Though the flip side of that is that my muscles are reminding me it has been a very very long time since I last cycled; I am definitely still walking Sera up most of those hills! But the freedom of knowing that I now have the means to stop at the grocery store on the way home, or run to the bank on a moments notice or that we can just…get out of the house and go pretty much wherever.

Well, as I said, a small thing that isn’t exactly small.

I know I’ve been quiet since we got back. The reasons behind that are two fold. Primarily it’s because there hasn’t been all that much to talk about. Inclement weather, (a surprising amount of) drama at my day job, the fact that I still want a dog, or that I finally learned how to make spanakopita – none of these things are really all that note-worthy in the grand scheme of things.

Beyond that, it is simply because I am still healing. In strange slow ways that are shy to show themselves. In a way the process has been quicker for me because I absolutely had to go back to work nearly as soon as I came home. This forced me to expose myself to the general public quite possibly before I was ready for it, and I had to either figure out how to tread water or sink to the bottom. Fortunately for me I’m a fairly strong swimmer. However, a great deal of that is still bravado. I’m still extremely sensitive to odd things, I still confuse easily and find myself jumping at shadows, and – and this is the weirdest one – sudden displays of authority or changes in guidelines freak me out (no, that doesn’t mean I have a ‘problem with authority’, it is better described as: if someone tells me to do something, my instant instinct is to worry that I should have known that already and what else am I doing wrong.). It has also been over a decade since I worked a standard full time 5 day work week, and I often find myself struggling with the all-too-common thinking of “is this…it?” that I’m certain plagues most 9-5 workers in the world. A transition that I had always thought would happen gradually over the course of at least a year has suddenly slammed me sideways in a grand total of three months.

I’m a little…rattled?

And that, I suppose, has made me quiet.

And that’s not a bad thing. I’ll find my words again in time.

Until that happens. Please try not to be too concerned. I’m fine. I’m probably just out on my bike.

Posted in Sadie, Vacations/Shore-Side | Leave a comment

Posted on July 1, 2020 by GypsyShaughnessy

This is not exactly an entry, it is more of a reminder…to myself…to others. To almost everyone who knows me, and some who think they do but don’t actually. Read this entry. It’s still true.

Thank you.

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Cracked Reflections – Victoria, BC – [06/16/2020]

Posted on June 16, 2020 by GypsyShaughnessy

Who is that girl I see? Staring straight back at me
Why is my reflection someone I don’t know?

I almost feel as if I owe everyone in my “normal” life an apology. I’m not really myself. I know I’m not. I can feel it. I’m extremely jumpy and edgy and I get angry for the littlest reason.

Apparently it’s going to take a lot longer to recover from…whatever this was…than I thought.

I wish I could explain it. I wish I could explain why I’m so jumpy, so outright paraniod (and for those of you who know me off page, I mean more than usual), why…any of it. But I can’t. I thought that when we got home, everything would just shift smoothly back into place; that I would step back into my “home” skin just like always… but it turns out it doesn’t work like that.

For one thing, I haven’t worked full time retail since I was in my early twenties. Yes, when we’re out on contract I work 7 days a week technically, but the hours for my position are consistently more spread out and are overall much lighter. I don’t work 8 hours a day, and I’m far from on my feet all the time. So shifting back into a ‘standard’ 9 to 5, when I usually just jump on a few days a week? Has been a shock to my system physically to say the least. But it’s not so much that – time will adjust me to the physical – it’s the mental.

People…seem to frighten me a lot more than they used to. It’s as though I’ve actively forgotten how to be around a group of just plain old normal people. I don’t know how to handle them, sometimes I don’t even know how to talk to them. There are moments when I simply cannot speak, I just stand there and stare at nothing for what feels like 10 minutes at a time. And I don’t know where that’s coming from really. I feel…distant from everything and everyone. And I keep trying to move forward from it, but it’s as though some kind of sticky stretchy bubblegum is still holding me back.

Also, my filter seems to be completely broken.

And still, people keep asking if we’re going to go back. For those of you wondering that question – and it’s a legitimate question, and we know that everyone’s heart is in the right place: it’s too early to say.

The best I can give you is this: we’re trying. We’re really truly trying.

I wish I could make it go faster. I wish I could wake up tomorrow and just…be fine. Part of me can’t help thinking that this is utterly ridiculous there is no reason at all for me to be reacting like this. But it also seems to be something I can’t quite control.

So if I say something foolish, or I make a decision or have a reaction that seems completely opposite to me? Bear with me…please.

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I Understand…That I Will Never Understand – Victoria, BC – [06/05/2020]

Posted on June 5, 2020 by GypsyShaughnessy

There’s a cry in the distance
It’s a voice that comes from deep within
There’s a cry asking why
I pray the answers up ahead
~ “I know where I’ve been”, Hairspray

AND

“I wish it need not have happened in my time”
“So do I. And so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us”

~ Lord of the Rings

I do not have the resources to donate, and I do not have the mental strength to rally. But I have words. That’s the one thing I can do. I can give other people my words and hope that someone’s eyes are opened because of them.

I feel that if I do not say something I am – as so many including myself are often guilty of being – complicit in my silence. And yet, I don’t have a clue as to what to say.

I watch the events unfolding on the other side of our closed border with a kind of horrified fascination. Just when I think it is impossible for things to get any worse, for things to explode anymore, there is more fuel added to the fire. More pain, more violence more…everything.

So I will try and sort it out in my head as best I can. Starting first with the little bit I know:

I am caucasian, so caucasian that if you put me in the sun too long I turn into a lobster. I am, most definitely, one of the lucky ones. I am privileged. I won the genetic lottery in every sense. Over the years I have struggled with understanding what that meant, and there are many times when I still struggle with it. Acknowledging privilege does not mean that one has to carry ‘guilt’, but it does mean that I have to try my best to carry responsibility. It means acknowledging that I am lucky enough to move through the world with little (or at least much much less) resistance simply due to the privilege of the colour of my skin. It means acknowledging that many many others do not have that luxury.  Just like there are no rights without responsibilities, there is no privilege without responsibility either.

I understand that I will never understand. It is impossible to me to comprehend the mindset or the day to day reality of a Person of Colour. I will never know their thoughts, their fears or their perception. I walk through the world differently than they do, and while that is not my fault, but I’ve also done nothing at all to earn it.

The unrest and violence that’s boiling over across our shared border makes me heartsick, and all I find myself able to do is try to educate people as to why it is happening. Try to make people understand that this didn’t just come out of nowhere. This is the climax of a long, bloody, uphill battle that has been fought and lost for centuries that people like me will never understand because we do not live it. It is not our daily reality.

But just because I do not understand it, and do not live it every day. Just because I am lucky enough to be able to walk by a police car and think nothing more than “oh hey look, radar gun”, does not mean that I can afford to be unaware of it.

This is a case where “thoughts and prayers” will do nothing. Not everyone can donate to a cause, or participate in a rally, but everyone can educate themselves, educate their social circle; everyone can open their eyes just that little bit wider. Everyone can acknowledge the issue and work as a whole to change it from the inside. Everyone can change their attitude, their perception, their way of interpreting and acknowledging reality.

And for all the many people saying “but all lives matter!”. Yes. Yes of course every life matters. We know that. Everyone knows that. No one has ever said anything against that. Every blessed being that walks, stumbles or crawls across the surface of this perpetually breaking perpetually healing planet matters. BUT that not what this is about. All lives cannot matter, *UNTIL* Black Lives Matter. And right now, it is Black Lives that are in danger. THAT is the house that is on fire. That is the portion of the “all” that desperately needs our help and acknowledgment and support.

A friend of mine said that we are only as strong as our weakest link, and right now our “weakest” link needs us. Needs us to use our power, our privilege, even if all we have to give are our words.

Please. Open your eyes. Open your ears. Open your mind. Do not erase our differences: embrace them, use them to move forward. Use your power to create the change that needs to happen in the world for those of us that have less.

And stand with those who need us the most.

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Paper Strong – Victoria, BC – [06/01/2020]

Posted on June 1, 2020 by GypsyShaughnessy

Westley and I are joined by the bonds of love
And you cannot track that, even with a thousand bloodhounds
And you cannot break it, even with a thousand swords..

~ The Princess Bride

A year ago Saturday, I was picking up friends from the airport, arranging photographers and ramping up to what felt like the biggest moment of my life.

I can’t believe…that it has already been a year.

No one ever said that marriage would be easy, but Amras and I have had one rollercoaster of a first year. Four months of immigration required separation, a Christmas spent jumping the border and back again for immigration exams,  two family emergencies, one job change, three contracts, a pandemic that left us imprisoned on the fleet that once employed us for a month and a half and has spiraled into an industry wide freeze that sent us from gainfully employed to gleefully scraping by at home.

Scars upon scares, rollercoasters upon mountains.

And yet…?

Even at the worst of times, even when we were breaking down on that bloody ship and at our moments of driving each other absolutely insane…I know, deep down, I couldn’t have gotten through any of it without this man at my side.

If we can survive all of the insanity of the past twelve months and still come out of it pretty much whole (and, at the very least, kindly acknowledging each others cracks), I have to say I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to get through whatever else the world has to throw at us.

Amras and I my have only reached our paper year…but we, like so many others, have been forged in fire.

Because we never know do we? We just never know.

A year ago today I stood cowering among the peony trees in Abkhazi Gardens, practically propped up by my bridesmaids, with my mother’s assurances still in my ears from that morning: “if you have any doubts, no one, no one will judge you for deciding you’re not ready. This is a choice. This is your choice. And it’s a big one.”

I was more nervous than I had ever been for any show, or any audition, ever. Because this part mattered, this was my whole life. But I never actually had cold feet. I never actually had real doubt. I just had…terror that I wouldn’t be able to do it right. When one is a (very pampered, very lucky) only child brought up on Disney and movie musicals, whose closest friends in her formative years were various forms of fictional characters – who never truly thought she would get married? Well, you find out very quickly just how much you don’t know. The movies, the fairy tales…they don’t tell you what happens after the ‘happy ever after’. A year ago I couldn’t cook (I’m improving), I could barely balance a budget (that changed), and the only experience I had cohabitating with another human who wasn’t related to me was when I shared a flat with three equally melodramatic British theatre geeks during my time in London. Those are not particularly great qualifications for “Canadian Housewife of the Year”.

But a lot can shift in a year. Amras and I have known each other for a very long time, but there is a difference between being best friends and being married. It takes time to get used to the little things, to having someone else in “your” space, to learning when to bend and compromise and when to stand up for what’s personally important to you. It takes time to learn needs and – yes – expectations. Every day, always, we learn. We communicate, we do our best to listen.

I’m still not going to be nominated for Housewife of the Year anytime soon. I still panic when I go to the grocery store and I still have a tendency to burn the bottom of our best saucepans. But all in all, I’ve ended up realizing that I had far stronger role models than I realized.

The world is a very different place now than it was when I walked down that flower-scented aisle on my father’s arm a year ago. We have all lost a lot of our wide-eyed innocence, for those of us that had any left, and we approach the world with a lot more caution. When Amras and I exchanged vows, we were both employed as world travelers, with a semi-solid plan for shifting that path in the mid-range future. Now, I’m a 9-5 retail worker who comes home every evening to a husband who’s worried about me going to work in the first place, because it feels like every time I step out that door I’m potentially exposed to the insanity. I come home tired and wired and worn, but I come home. And I come home to him.

To someone who listens when I tell them that I’m a little broken and can’t always find my glue, who realizes that sometimes it’s something as small as ‘by the way the laundry’s done’ that makes all the difference in the world. Someone who shares my nerd-driven interests (“you totally need to get that Civ 6 expansion”) and who gleefully babbles to me about his (“so, I’m playing this new challenge!”), who encourages me and worries for me and sits with me in the mornings to drink tea and plan the day no matter how tired we both are and even if the plan ends up being no plan at all…

Someone who is …there. Who is actively present in my life.

And I only hope, that he knows just how much that means.

And that it will always always, be mutual.

Because that’s what partners do…

Because we may only be on the ‘paper’ anniversary. But we are parchment over steel…tempered by trauma. And we will not let the world break us.

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May The Odds – Victoria, BC – [05/24/2020]

Posted on May 24, 2020 by GypsyShaughnessy

Good news! Amras and I have been officially released from our “just returned home to Canada from abroad” self-isolation period. We will soon be free to at the very least walk around the neighbourhood! My first trip to the drugstore was…an experience.

However, even though the Canadian government is taking pretty good care of its citizens, we cannot live on the C.E.R.B stipend, at least not with that much ease. Which means I step into a title I never thought I would hold: I am, as of tomorrow, an Essential Worker.

Yup, those hometown heroes you keep reading about? The ones keeping the grocery stores open and the lights on? I get to join my Dad as one of them. Turns out one of the business types that has been deemed essential in our province is hardware stores. Which means my little go-between job at the local store has been transformed into…something…important?

I’ve been in and out of retail most of my adult life. It was a way to make ends meet through school and continues to be a way to make ends meet now. I usually swing in between contracts because the store needs the help and I need vacation money. But this is not a vacation. Amras and I are “landed” for the indefinite future, the jury is very much still out on whether or not we will ever return to ships again (please don’t ask, we don’t know yet), and we have to do day to day things like eat and pay bills. That means heading out into the fray…

If I really look it in the face, I’m more than a little nervous about stepping back into the retail world tomorrow. For one thing, it’s actually been quite some time since I was around a lot of “normal” people at once. It’s been two weeks since I returned home and, while I’ve been doing nothing but playing video games and watching streaming TV, I honestly don’t know that I feel fully rested or recovered, and I’m not 100% sure how to handle being back “out in the world”. For a second,  way more important thing, since I’ve been home? I’ve seen a shocking amount of people who seem to think that just because there is a plan to slowly return things back to normal that they are back to normal.

I never expected things on land to be as insanely strict as they were on the ship, but I also never expected to so quickly starting seeing the opposite of what was enforced on us. When I step out the door tomorrow, and walk through the doors of the stock room, I can’t help but feel like I’m playing some bizarre game of Russian roulette. We all are! Every single person who will be working that floor – and every other floor – with me. Every grocery store worker, hardware store clerk, delivery man, all of us. We’ll be working because we have to on many levels, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not more than a little bit…uneasy about the concept. If it were possible (and it’s not) I would have my whole family staying here, in the house, safe and isolated and away.

But that’s not possible.

So I ask this of you, of all of you: please remember that just because things suddenly seem “normal” doesn’t mean they are. Science and history tells us that this is the most vulnerable part of the curve, when everything seems so much better and everyone seems fine and we’re all tired and we all have cabin fever. Remember ,the virus is not tired. It is not gone, it’s just been controlled. To keep it controlled, we need to keep being sensible.

Stay home if you can. Please. And if you must go out, if you must do more than just take a walk down the street and back for exercise. Please, be smart about it. When we ask you to wear a mask and practice social distancing, to not try to pay with cash (yes Canadian cash is washable, but with the number of transactions going through at the store right now we don’t have time to do that), and to stay on the other side of the plexiglass – we are not doing it to annoy you, we are doing it to protect us. You may be only jumping out of your car to grab one item from the store and then running straight home again. People like my Dad and I? We’ll be in that store 8 hours a day, multiple days a week, dealing with hundreds of people…

Normally that’s not at all a big deal, it goes with the job. Now? It’s a little bit scary…

So please, I remind you all of what I’ve been trying to remember myself through all of this: be kind. Remember that sometimes being kind means you have to be a little inconvenienced for the good of someone else. Sometimes being kind takes a form that you don’t expect. But please…be kind.

And…as for me?

Well… “May the odds be ever in [my] favour”

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After the Storm – Victoria, BC – [05/14/2020]

Posted on May 14, 2020 by GypsyShaughnessy

It’s difficult to explain what being home is like. There are so many other times that I’ve used the phrase “it’s like coming home” to describe something else that…I don’t know how to find the words to describe the actual act of being home after a trauma.

Because that’s what this has been. A trauma. For all of us. For Amras, for me, for everyone involved in getting us home, for every one of our crew mates who are still floating about in luxurious confinement, going slowly mad. It’s a trauma, no more, no less. Everyone reacts to trauma differently. Everyone gets slack.

This hasn’t been a normal homecoming. I can’t hug my parents, I can’t cuddle the cat. Conversations have to be held from across the yard or through a screen door with safe distance in between. Our family picks up our groceries for us and leaves them in the driveway so I can go out and pick them up when everyone is safely out of harms way. Everything from flower delivery to mail pick up is done with gloves (fresh pair, every time), and even our luggage got sanitized before we unpacked it. For two weeks, we can’t even step off the property…

It’s all so very different…

And yet…

And yet…

This has been one of the best, most brilliant, kindest homecomings that I have ever experienced in all my years of travel. When Amras and I arrived home from the airport, it was to the scent of fresh flowers and a fully stocked fridge. It was with more messages of support and homecoming and care than I have ever experienced before…and that has been ongoing, in the few days we’ve been here.

And…we are seeing how much we have changed.

Windows are open, screen doors are thrown wide. We’ve eaten breakfast outside every morning, simply because we can. The smell of fresh-brewed coffee makes me tear up. The simple sound of people conversing as they walk down the street is comforting. The few cars that pass our house are comforting. I no longer care so much what people think of me, or if people are staring at me. I am even enjoying the occasional chill in the air (the weather onboard ship was sweltering and unchanging, “perfect” weather can grind on you more than you think). I’m spending less time in front of the computer and more time on the patio.

The first thing Amras and I did the first morning we were home was just stand outside and…breathe. And try not to cry, and breathe some more.

I forgot how much I’d missed the birdsong…

Home hasn’t changed. The way I look at it has. The way I appreciate it has. Not just the building, or the birds or the people, but all of it together.

Home.

The world is changing. Has changed. Will change. There are some really really big decisions around the corner for me and my fellow gypsies. It’s too soon to make those decisions, we are still too raw, too ragged and worn too thin. We need to heal and stabilized and allow ourselves the time for that process; then we can address the big questions. Not before.

But for now? For now…we are enjoying the time off the rollercoaster…

And taking the time…to be so, so very grateful…

And to listen to the birds…

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‘Round the Old Oak Tree – Toronto, Canada – [05/10/2020]

Posted on May 10, 2020 by GypsyShaughnessy

I’m coming home, I’ve done my time
Now I’ve got to know what is an isn’t mine
If you received my letter telling you I’d soon be free
Then you’ll know just what to do…

It has been…a long…long road.

55 days, 51 of them without guests. Most of them spent bouncing around on a ship in the ocean with absolutely no idea what was going to happen to us. I still harbour no ill will against the company; they – and our sister line – did everything (and seriously, I mean everything, more on that momentarily), to try and fix this situation; but after this? Well, it may be time to give some serious consideration to a career that doesn’t involve travelling for a living.

It’s hard to explain what has really been going on with us for the past few weeks. After we moved from our original ship (which was fairly relaxed because we had all been together already for so long and were totally green) we were put into an environment that was nearly militaristic in nature at times. We were kept in separate cabins, we could leave for meals (which were half hour slots and the dining room was divided by ship), and twice daily temperature checks, and that’s it. We were not supposed to leave for anything other than that. Yes, people did, but it was made very clear that we were not supposed to. There were announcements regularly reminding us of this every day.

Remember what I said about “club fed”? A prison still feels like a prison, no matter how comfortable or well cared for.

But at long last, yesterday we were let off the ship.

It was a strange and bitter sweet moment really, we had been with these people for over a month in some cases, we had been each other’s only social contact, only company, for all that time. When we all finally gathered in the main dining room, hauling luggage and adjusting masks…it was a scene of organized emotional chaos.

Finally, the onboard HRM called out

Okay everyone, let’s say goodbye to the CANADIANS

And there was a room-wide cheer…and we hauled all our gear down to the gangway. On our way we were issued with gloves (“please glove up before you reach the terminal), health certificates (“in case anyone asks for it”), health questionnaires, and a massive list of requirements for how we had to self-isolate on our arrival at our final destination. We had already signed off on that list three times that I was aware of, but we signed off on it again…

And then we were on land. For the first time in what felt like a year. And there was a woman holding a huge Canadian flag as we walked out of the terminal.

It was quite the moment…

Especially for Amras and I.

You see, the truth is? It’s a miracle that Amras is in the country with me. By all predictions, he wasn’t supposed to be. He very nearly wasn’t. Those of you who follow my facebook will be aware that until the night before last, we had braced for him to have to stay in Florida. Potentially indefinitely. It took a team of I-honestly-don’t-know how many people, including the HRM of a company we didn’t even work for, the VP of the same company, and including some people extremely high up, to even make sure he got clearance onto the charter plane. And even then , the pilot of the charter plane (who was sweet) had to get him to double check. At that point, I think my heart actually stopped for a second.

When we touched down in Toronto we were prepared for a very long secondary interview (when you’re in the midst of an immigration application you always end up in secondary) and honestly I was scared…really scared. Especially when the agent on duty told me that I had to be seated elsewhere as she just wanted to talk to Amras…after all the twists and turns, after everything we’d been through…they could still turn us back. Right at this moment.

And they didn’t.

I wasn’t part of the interview, I didn’t witness the conversation. But in less time than we ever could have expected, we were standing – together – in the main arrivals terminal of Toronto Pearson…

It took a long while for that to sink in.

We aren’t home yet. Not quite. Our flight home is this evening.

And then we have to deal with the wonder that is mandatory two-week quarantine, which is extremely unpleasant on multiple levels.

But at the very least we’ll be home.

Our ordeal, finally, is over.

And on that note there is something very important that I feel like I need to give voice to at this point. For Amras and I, the rollercoaster is slowly coming to a close. For us, life will filter back to some kind of normal. For many others – hundreds of others – it’s nowhere near. There are still thousands of crew members out there, and they’re still stuck. Don’t forget about them just because you no longer have to worry about us.

And something else…Amras, me, all of our colleagues. Heck, the whole world right now – we have come out of something incredibly intense. Some would argue traumatic. It is going to leave a mark on us. On all of us. PTSD isn’t something that is just about physical wars, and it’s not just limited to soldiers. We have come from an environment that was ….pretty insane. Our freedom onboard, our ability to go home, it all depended on doing exactly what we were told, exactly when we were told to do it. A lot of you may be welcoming crew members back to your communities in the coming weeks; and if you are – please remember, we’re all feeling pretty broken still. The cracks will heal, and the emotional rollercoaster. If you know someone who’s been through this particular wringer? Keep in mind that they may not make much sense at first…they may be jumpy and easily triggered. Me? I’m still crying for absolutely no reason. Most of us have utterly no idea what kind of world we’re coming back to…because we’ve been in one that is so very different for so many weeks.

Please, be patient with us.

Be patient with yourselves.

And above all things…as always…remember to be kind.

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