And So It Begins

There’s something wrong with me, and I can’t figure out what it is. In thirteen minutes I have to be at work, and I’ve decided that this is the best time for me to start my new web journal. If not now, when? I’m sitting in a bedroom at my boyfriend’s mother’s house, sweat dripping off my face, mainly from the extremely hot shower I just got out of, and I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong.

Everything should be great right now. Perfect. My boat’s in the water. I’m living on it, more or less. Karl’s out working on the varnish right now, allegedly, and after that’s done we can put back in the wood fittings and cushions, and then maybe it will start to feel like a home.

What it boils down to was that I didn’t have my conditioner in the shower just now. It’s in my gym bag, which I cart to and from the boat every day, along with my hairbrush, deodorant, and a growing wardrobe of accessories. I’m sick of not having a home—I haven’t had a place that was my own in two-and-a-half years now, and the boat, in the water, was supposed to solve this quandary. But I’m just as homeless now as ever. I have to shower in places that are not mine, and that will continue to be so, unless we get a sun shower rigged up. Unlikely in the extreme.

My peripatetic urge is beginning to take on the character of a compulsion. Am I really cut out for this life? Should I really just settle down somewhere, buy a house, have a couple of kids, start growing vegetables? At least I’d have conditioner in the shower. I keep telling myself that I wouldn’t be happy then, either, but is that really true? I can’t answer that, because I haven’t done it.

I keep postponing my contentment to a later date: once the boat is in the water, once the varnish is finished, once the sails are up, once the galley is set up. But this dynamic in myself will never be resolved—my simultaneous longing for the comforts of stability, the conditioner, and the everyday adventures of mobility. Is all of this just born of fear? Fear of what I’ll discover about myself if I settle down?

In any case, I’m not changing course. I have laid this one down, and I’ll follow it until the weather turns. I hope this hiccup of discontent is just a passing gust.