Heavy on the Mind

 

 

I am really struggling to make the decisions that are just ahead of me in the coming days.  Granted, I know the conditions for problem solving could hardly have been worse: drinking, S.C. vacation, constant socializing, TV, junk food, minimal sleep, minimal exercise—these are all the things that typically lead to my demise and immanent death.

So it is high time to get back on the right foot.  I am home.  I am alone.  I went for a run yesterday eve, slept late and hard.  Already things are becoming clearer.  But, when the time is right, what I need is to follow my emergency plan to health and rejuvenation, which follows:

a)     solitude

b)     fast 4 – 5 days

c)     resume diet with lots of fruit

d)     exercise daily

e)     dream and plan

 

This works for me.  Not only do I cleanse my body, but I regain my direction.  It feels like rebirth, starting over.  Everything is fresh and alive and I have the energy to pursuit what lies before me.  (And if you'd seen the amount of meat I've eaten in the last three months you would understand the need to cleanse thy body.)

 

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What I can't seem to decide upon is my immediate direction from here.  I am not at all certain, as I was, that I should remain here for the year.  I don't know where that confidence has gone or why.  I am now considering loads of other choices:  sailing back north to see Herb and Brian and maybe Anne.  Maybe heading south to Tasmania and around Australia and around the Cape of Good Hope as quickly as possible to complete a circumnavigation in two years and change.

 

All I feel for sure is that my first obligation is to my ship.  She needs to be hauled out and cleaned.  She needs painting from end to end, inside and out.  I suppose this is as good a place as any to do it, but I'd consider heading down to Wellington as well.  The time is now.  Clean the boat, look at engine repair/replacement, find her a home if I chose to head back to Akaroa or Wanaka.

The logistics of trying to maintain a boat and live onshore or difficult for me to manage.  Many do it, but they spend much more than I am now willing to.

 

 

I have been battling another bout of severe loneliness.  (This is another issue that is far worse for me when I go back to SC.  I am more comfortable here.)  It seems to get worse with age.  If feels somehow terminal since I haven't met anyone new in such a long time. 

It frustrates me to waste so much thought and energy and time when I have such important things that currently need my attention.,   I sit and ask, "why, why, why"—there is no answer, I know there isn't an answer (or do I?), but I ask again and again.  I want to get past it—and I will—I always do.  But since Martina left, and with her all hope of a future, I have been rather despondant.

It is very empty, not having someone to place your hopes upon.  Come to think of it—I think I've always had a woman for whom I shared some sort of infatuation:  Meagan Tailor when I was little, Elise Caskey in highschool, Genny for ages, then Wendy and most recently Martina.

But these things change with age, even if the sentiment remains just the same.  As you age the meaning of the relationship grows.  Now, when I consider a relationship, it is with the knowledge, and hope, that I may die with this person—and what is more—if I don't, I may die alone.

Interestingly, I am not afraid of being alone or dying alone.  I have been scolded in the past for accepting or even desiring these things.  It is that I am unsure of the future that is ahead of me.  I don't know what is best.  And it is this confusion that make the loneliness and isolation so hard to bare.

If I were sure I wanted a life alone, or needed solitude to do what I wish, then it would be far easier to brush away longings of a shared bed and shared experience.  But I don't know.

I can't imagine how I can do some of the things I dream of, cruising Chile or Antarctica without a partner.  How?  Crew?—I suppose, but it isn't the same.

 

And what am I to do about it?  Nothing.  There is nothing to do.  I must live as I live, do what I do and if I meet someone who shares my dreams and my passion, then, perhaps, hurray for me!  But if I don't I am still obligated to my life and my direction. 

When I left Port Townsend I expected to do this thing alone.  I knew it would be hard.  But then I found such community and I never felt alone.  It was easy.  But now that struggle is upon me and it is different than I imagined it.  It is much more mental; it is a thought issue: loneliness is distracting.

 

 

But I expect all this to lighten up soon.  I will serve Araby and thereby raise my own esteem.  A path will come and once again I will revel in my freedom.  After all, it has afforded me such wonderful opportunities.  It has been my life.  It is only in weakness that I query after the future and demand answers.

Actually, only now does it come to mind the last time this happened: it was just after I put Araby on the rocks on Orcas Island.  And the situation was so much the same.  I had kept a bad diet; I wasn't exercising—I wasn't healthy at all.  And I was ridiculously lonely.

And it was that summer I studied nutrition and I fasted and I got well overnight and was back in the game.

Ha ha.  I remember.  It was so similar.

 

And also: February has historically been my worst month of the year.  This can't help.