One relative of mine, the one who lives in Germany and the only one who maintains communication with me asked me If everything is okay with me and Meg. The guy has no clue, how it is for us. And there is no way I could explain it to him. Him out there, living a life of a “normal” person with a job, a home, people who know him and a country that lets him live inside indefinitely. So I don’t bother. Our communication is superficial. In that, he would never get it. I am not sure anybody can.
How can anybody understand what it is like to live for 19 years with no home, no safety, always on the move (Meg calls it run). Not knowing where you will end up the next day? There is no way. And there is no reason for anybody to care about me and Meg. They don’t know us, they have their own life. And so Meg and I go on, alone, with no-one at all in our life to understand or care. No-one.
We are on land right now. Actually on stilts that hold the boat upright. It felt better at first, we are on land! Now it is back to horror. Meg is terrified at the amount of money the work on the boat costs and just to have the stupid thing in the yard. And both of us are horrified about the next day. The next week, the next month. Where to next? How many people live with this question, I wonder. Every day.
The money has long been gone. Now, it is only debt that “steals our future” the way Meg puts it. And so here we are, on the island we can’t stand (where the white are hated by the black though we aren’t supposed to speak of it and where the work done on the boat is a joke and a huge mistake that cost you a lot of money). We are in the part of the world we don’t want to be in. Rather, can’t stomach being in. And the only direction viable being the open Atlantic ocean. In the winter.
Meg doesn’t want to be alive. She speaks of it every day now. And I wonder, is it me who is at fault. I crossed her path all those years ago and she decided she wants to be with a Russian. Or is it her poor decisions? Starting with buying the boat in Turkey and getting me to her home? We aren’t supposed to speak of it. Of the way we feel about sailing, the boat and our decision to buy the boat and sail it to Canada. It is supposed to be a heroic story where everything ends well. Triumphant. But that’s movies, life is not a movie. Life goes on and one day due to circumstances and people in your life it corners you. As it did with us today.
I have no idea what will become of us. How we will get out of this one. But at least, it gives me a chance to write about it. For a moment I am distracted from the work on the boat we both hate. From the environment we can’t believe we find ourselves in and are stuck in. And maybe just thinking of it, looking at it form the side will help me find a way out. I always believed there is nothing impossible for me and Meg. But that was when she had money. Is it all about money, I wonder.