I am silent. Too silent. Also I
lack basic communication skills.
We go to the market in Africa to
buy meat to freeze, enough for the next three months, because here it is cheap
but on the islands, in the middle of the Atlantic, it can be expensive. Every
stall sells, as well as beef and pork and chicken in regular cuts, pre-spiced
stew meat in what looks like some sort of curry with mint. The flavour wafts up
delicious and exotic. I don’t know what you are supposed to do with it but I am
sure, cooked in any fashion and served with rice, it would be heavenly. I
desperately want to get some to try. I ask HS. ‘No,’ he answers emphatically.
And I don’t push the issue. I just shut up. We buy what he wants to buy.
Nothing else. Also later at the grocery store. I am embarrassed by my response.
I sulk. For the whole afternoon I am silent.
I want to stay in Ceuta for another
day to walk across the border into Morocco to visit the first little village
but HS’s plan is to go back to Europe the next day. We are not going to do
anything in Europe except wait. He has, apparently, no desire to visit anywhere
and I cannot figure out how to broach the subject of staying another day, so I
say nothing, and we leave on his schedule, and my little town will never be
visited by me, and all because I couldn’t manage to ask. I am way too silent.
Heading back to Gibraltar, it is,
in my opinion, a fantastic sailing day. The sun is shining, the sky blue and
the sea bluer, the wind blowing a steady 15 to 20 knots… who could ask for anything better? ‘We
are too close to the wind,’ HS says, ‘we will have to motor.’ So we do. I sit
there in shock. Motor? Really? He had said before that he didn’t like sailing
and I hadn’t believed him. I guess it’s true. How could you not choose to sail
on a day like today? Also, it would have been a perfect time for me to learn
how to start the motor, start the nav computer, do the crossing. It would have
been a perfect time for me to learn how to set the sails. It would have been a
perfect time for a lot of things. But HS, by habit, did everything, did not even
think to include me at all (when he sailed with his wife, he told me, they had
clearly defined duties, she did all the cooking and he did all the sailing) and
so as we motored I sat, silent, too silent, upset, but not sure, at all, how to
appropriately express my disappointment in any of it, and, therefore, silent.
HS kicked his three previous crew
off, Bam, Bam, Bam, for the littlest reasons; one wanted to use a hair dryer,
the next wouldn’t eat onions, the third didn’t know enough about world politics
to be a good conversationalist, and I, so desperate to sail on this, the boat
of my dreams, came on board with the mindset that I would be willing to do exactly
everything just how he wanted me to do, eat onions and all, in order to be
allowed to crew for him… I knew the lay of the land, but, nonetheless, only a
few weeks in, I find myself disgruntled. We eat, every single meal, exactly
what he wants to eat, every suggestion of mine rejected, and I, so afraid of
being voted off the boat if I don’t follow suit, act as if I am not hurt by my
total lack of input into any decisions whatsoever including the trivial. I
resent all this, by which I mean, mostly, my own behaviours. It is, I know, his
boat, his trip, his life. I am the one who asked to be here, I knew the rules
ahead of time, but I still resent them. And I deal with this through silence
which doesn’t help at all.
I am not aggressive. I am not
assertive. I am meek, mild, and submissive which leaves me, unfortunately,
feeling weak and cowed. The little things I feel I have no right to complain
about are starting to bug me and I am beginning to feel lost. I am getting old
and feeling trapped in spaces I have been in too often before. These are
lessons I ought to have learnt by now. I wonder how much of it is conditioning
I got when I was a kid, ‘Your father – translate ‘any man’ - is always to be respected’ and how
much is just my nature. I wish I were on better terms with my sisters because
this is the kind of thing that I would love to discuss with them.
I knew that HS was out of my league,
that I would be overpowered by his personality, but I came anyway. I knew,
ahead of time, that everything was going to have to be done his way, and I knew
that I don’t like it when I get no input, but I came anyway. How can I possibly
complain?
The next day is greyer than ever. Outside it
is overcast and raining and inside I am falling apart. HS cooked supper our
first day back and then, when I said I’d cook the next day, he said he hadn’t
liked anything I had cooked so far and that he would make supper again. So, he
will do all the sailing and all the cooking? What will there be left for me to
do? It is grey outside, and grey in my heart. I don’t know what he wants from
me (he did advertise for crew) and don’t even know how to start asking this
question. I don’t know what to do. So I am silent.
Part of the problem, I hope, is
that we have been here a month and have not even started sailing yet. I am
determined to stick it out at least until we have done our first leg, made it
to the Canaries. Nick, our other crew, is due to arrive soon, and hopefully a
third person will mix up the dynamics, also, the weather is looking up so we
might actually leave. After the first leg I can always jump ship if I really
feel that it would be a dismal and unproductive crossing, but I have to stay
with the boat until that time. I have to. Hopefully at sea he will develop a
watch schedule. If he does, if I feel I am doing something useful, then it
might be worth staying. If it is a disaster, if he does almost everything and
Nick takes over the rest and I am just totally useless, then, well, then it
might make sense not to stay. To quit, however, after a month, yet before even
the first full day at sea, seems ridiculous. I vow not to.
Later I lie in bed and listen to
the wind howling, the halyards banging against the mast, the water washing the
hull. My mind is in turmoil. I love being here. I do. It is just getting along
with another person that is so difficult. And, I know, a lot of it is me. And,
also, I have to admit, I really did set myself up for this one, going, again,
on another person’s vacation where I knew, in advance, that I would have no
input. I knew it. And I came anyway. What was I thinking? I, as usual, have put
myself into a situation where I have little control, where someone else gets to
dictate everything, and I am, as usual, so frustrated that I want to scream.
AARGH. I don’t know if I will ever learn. I really really don’t know.
Yet, despite everything, I do like
being here.
It is all a mess.
