When You're Starving, You'll Eat Anything...

Drunken staggering shadows slip out of the anonymity of darkness into recognizability in the pale light of the marina street lamps.  A sailing regatta ends as the weekend does on a hot, muggy Sunday in St. Martin.  Zombie walkers sporting stereotypical boat clothing and rum laden expressions zig-zaggedly make it back to their boats. Two guys on the boat next door stumble onto the pristine decks of the multi-million dollar yacht they crew on and take turns pissing over the side.  A group of young women loudly sing as they stumble through the street, purses swishing and paper cups sloshing liquids over their sides.  I sit quietly in the darkness on the aft deck listening to music through headphones slowly sipping my after-work beer in my clean evening uniform.  I imagine they are all a part of a dance, moving in time to the haunting music that is making this scenario a drama it is not.  There was a time I would have been jealous to spend a night out dancing in a club in the Caribbean.  There was a time I would have done it even though I had to be at sea the next day.  Time has a funny way of branding unwise decisions into the brains of those willing to listen.  I have had to be branded a few times more than the average person, I imagine, getting slapped into listening eventually. Thankfully the last time stuck.  For now.  

I don't finish my beer.  It has no relevance tonight.  I am tired, I am at peace, I know I cannot do my job tomorrow if one becomes five.  My responsibilities to my future with my job and to my menu take precedence as I get up to head back inside.  There is nothing here I haven't seen and I would rather not see it and be peacefully dreaming than mindlessly staggering with a few less twenties in my pocket.  I am lonely, though, and that is why I can't really judge and also can't sleep.  Because deep down, I understand more than I want to.

Do I sound depressed? I don't know what I am, to be honest, but yeah, maybe a bit depressed.  I am something in the "other" category and it has made my hands want to type again.  To reach out through my words and send out my flare in the darkness.  It has been almost two months since we left Palma and another two until we arrive back in Europe to Holland.  We will have had just a couple weekends off in this time and everyday I begin with a cutting board and a knife to prepare food.  It is my constant companion, my vice, and my nemesis all in one.  I don't know sometimes whether I am getting better at it or if I have become stagnant.  I just know that everyday I create, everyday what I make disappears, and everyday I start again.  There is a comfort and a loneliness in the cycle.  And the loneliness has started to become the comfort because it is safe.  Connections with people exist through text messages back home and imagined connections through podcasts and films because connections with people are a lot like my cooking when you travel like I do.  You create them, you consume what comfort you need from each other, you disappear, and then you move somewhere else and you start again.  When you have been at sea a lot, when you know anyone you meet you will have to leave, when you realize that they also are in the same boat (no pun intended), you know what you can do for each other is very limited.  It is the ones back home, the ones who don't understand the lifestyle and its effects that still hope for you, that still believe in your connection.  They are the ones who don't let go, whose light is the electricity that can be felt across an ocean in the darkest moments of the watch. Who you miss the most yet spend little to no time with in any given year.

I'm not going to lie, it has been hard for me lately. Hard in a way that is so far into the depths of loneliness that I have talked to my thoughts as though a separate person were in the room with me.  I pray all the time, though I don't know that I believe in God.  I'm starting to question whether I am just talking to myself and naming it God to feel less insane or if I really believe that someone out there is listening.  Have I become Tom Hanks in Castaway, talking to my own version of Wilson? It reads funny but it is sadly true, which may even make that statement funnier.   There are a lot of people who do what I do that feel this way often as well.  My crew mates and I talk about it from time to time. Often the true connections I have with other crew are when we can talk about it together and open up to someone about it.  There is a comfort in speaking the truth and a need for it because what I am writing tonight is more than likely felt by a lot of yacht workers.  Oddly and randomly enough, even Jonny Depp has done some research and writing about this!  (http://thegeneralalarm.com/2014/08/07/global-study-concludes-yachts-create-prisoner-mentality-in-crew/ )  

I am sad but not in a destructive or even bad way and it is ok to be sad if it motivates you to change.  Throwing the truth is sometimes the best way to sling the rock at the head of Goliath and kill the giant that has taken over.  Letting the truth set you free.  I know in my heart that in writing this, I am not alone in feeling this and it isn't maybe exclusive to yachting.  There are phases to loneliness and having passed the sadness, I've come to the land of acceptance and realization.  I am tired of being alone and battling it alone.  I am tired of making connections with strangers and sadly leaving and feeling as though I am an escalator you can have a moment of time to enjoy and then you must depart.  I haven't written for my blog in a long time because I didn't know how to deal with the way I was feeling and how to battle my depression and loneliness.  I am writing today because it is time that I do and I cannot do it alone anymore.

Thank you for reading.