Redhead Amok in Antarctica
Happy Birthday!
This has been a rough season on me. I am doing a job that for the most part bores me, though I enjoy my co-workers for they make coming to work worthwhile. I am inside at a desk all day long dealing with unhappy people, and lately I am overwhelmed easily. I thought after the first week or so of feeling this way, when I heard about Mr. Harris’s death, and my friend Sue's death in the same week, that I was dealing with it ok. But I think maybe I am not. It's not so much that I want to leave Antarctica, this is such a place of joy for me when I have the chance to get out and witness it. But I am lonely when I am normally just alone. Not that I even get enough time to be alone here. So I am lonely in full view of everyone at meal times, and in crowds of friends. I yearn to create deeper friendships, more sustaining connections to people down here, but it is an odd society. We are all so balls to the wall exhausted and the 24/7 sunlight (midday sunlight: bright & sharp at all times) has such a powerful effect on our inability to relax enough to get good restful sleep. We seek connections, yet they are ephemeral, since at the end of the season we all scatter to the four corners of the earth, not necessarily to return here next season. So there is a lot of short term relating happening here, either sexually or emotionally. Which can be exciting but is only temporarily satisfying.
We are all dealing with events & stresses on Ice, but our home lives go on. We are still in communication with family at home, involved in the efforts to save relationships that have begun to wither with the distance, made irrevocable choices about our futures, revealed lifelong secrets like little bombs we are not there to help clean up. People here have fled divorces & break-ups, difficult home lives, small-minded small towns, futureless cubicle jobs, the daily exhausting demands of our pasts. We are all here for different reasons, some of us hoping that by being here our lives will improve (financially, emotionally). We are seekers, many of us.
Despite being so very far away from home and the troubles there, we do feel the pull. We are all keeping secrets from people down here. Secrets that could get us fired, arrested, ostracized, gossiped about. Secrets that put our decisions here in a context we’ll never let you in on. So there is knowing and a great deal of unknowing of our co-workers, friends, dance partners, lovers, mealmates. We try to build that trust, because we need to be able to trust in such an environment. Some secrets are revealed and I hold them tenderly and appreciatively in my heart when I am on the receiving end. I do not share so easily.
So I hold onto my grief and try not to let it show so broadly that people are made to feel uncomfortable in my presence. But it preys on my sleep, it affects my appetite. I peer over my hill of sadness at people, sort of hoping that maybe one of them may have the strength to invite me to tell them. But they are all so tired and dragging hard and dealing with their own issues that most of them cannot hear my tiny meep meeps of dismay.
I am exhausted, not sleeping well, and not eating well. None of these things however, impairs my ability to be utterly shocked & delighted when I am smote with the beauty of this place. Perhaps when I witness it I am more prone to sobbing, than quiet tears, in this state I am in. But still it is worth it. I wish so much I could bring this place with me to show you all who are not here. I wish so much to tell you the stories, to expose how much of an impact this place has had on me without scaring you. I wish I could share this.
Happy Birthday Genevieve! Welcome to 41!
My co-workers here in Housing just sang me Happy Birthday and gave me a handmade birthday card tailor-made to recall some of my more “exposed” moments during WinFly. Thank you! It made me laugh.
posted by: coldwish at 11/10/05 07:30 |
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mcmurdo housing 2005-06
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