Seasickness

If I’m lucky, my seasickness will go no further than it’s primary stage of an incurable popping in my ears (made somewhat tolerable by constant, simultaneous yawning and nose-plugging) and some nagging tension in the back of my neck.  But, as my luck often has it, the seasickness moves beyond that, and the ear-popping intensifies and spreads to my throat, causing a thick, goopy sensation that feels on the verge of gagging me (although it never does).  No amount of water can fix the second-stage throat-clog—not that I feel much like drinking water at that point, because the tension in my neck has stretched its sickly tendrils towards my jaw and up into my head.  The resulting headache (often localized in my forehead) in turn makes me feel dizzy and nauseated.  This is my cue to suck on a ginger candy, my nausea treatment of choice (pills: drowsy, still nauseous; wristbands: bullshit), although results vary.

Sometimes the seasickness stops here and I’m left with a dull, nagging, and for lack of a better word, moldy feeling in my stomach.  But much of the time, that original neck tension ekes its way into my shoulders.  Thus begins and achy chain reaction that spreads to the tips of my toes, and I’m left wanting to do nothing more than hold my knees to my chest and sleep…or cry.  Or both.

That’s the other thing about seasickness; while it’s not making me unintentionally fall asleep or vomit over the side of the boat (for which the aforementioned nausea is commonly responsible), it’s very emotionally taxing.  Somehow, it manages to sneak into the deep corners of my psyche and drag out every unhappy detail of my life—details I’ve been trying no to focus on: homesickness, dissatisfaction with my work, old romantic wounds, you name it.  Rachel and I spent 3 wretched hours below deck the other day, while we were supposed to be cleaning, crying and feeding each others’ fires and just validating the living shit out of each other and our miseries.  Anyway, after this 60-ish-hour crossing, I’m hoping we won’t have anything too much worse, although we might.  I’ll cross my fingers for the former, but the fact is, I feel better now and we’re anchored, so I can sleep.