Took a boat....

[VERY LONG POST WARNING]

[edit note - the word "score" has been replaced in most instances with "jumping obstacle" (like in horse show jumping) to better reflect my intent]

Took a boat Sunday, down by the sea
It just felt so nice, you and me
We didn't have a problem or a care
And all around was silence, everywhere

You are the reason I was born
Be with you through all seasons
I'll always hear you when you call
We'll keep the love light shining
Through each night and day
A lonely life behind me
Oh what a change you've made

So down here on the ocean we will stay
Went through a lot of changes
Turned a lot of pages
When I took a boat Sunday

To know you as I know you now
That is all I need
And we will get along somehow
If we both believe

So down here on the ocean we will stay
Went through a lot of changes
Turned a lot of pages
When I took a boat Sunday




Smitten and I took a trip to the Caribbean. Some of you will have seen my videos of the event.

The trip is the culmination of decades of wishing. I have been enthralled by the Caribbean since I was in my early twenties. I had visited Africa in my late teens and early 20s and loved the tropics. I have been around a good chunk of the world (and had been by the time I met the STBX).

The warmth in Africa was incredible. Being in a place that has never known a glacier or freezing on more than a freak basis is beyond words. I live in a place where the ground is frozen 8 months of the year. Everything in life is clustered around preparing to survive these gawd-awful miserable winters - 20 to 40 below zero before you add the wind chill for months at a time.

To encounter the slow baked warmth - it is like the difference between beans that have been cooked for an hours, and beans that have been baked for days... A whole land that is totally cooked - totally warm... You may not understand just how cold it gets, and just how the weather permeates every element of the society and culture I live in. We are pretty much all only a single generation (well, to be precise, 80% according to Statistics Canada in 1997) off the land (farm or Indian reserve). The weather is everything when it comes to survival.

----

We have an annual festival of cultures in my city. At the Caribbean pavilion I first encountered Caribbean roti. As I ate my first roti filled with beef curry, and a side of red beans and rice, i knew that any culture that could create food like that was one I wanted to be a part of.

----

Being on the island we were on felt like home to me. More than here.

Being in the sun (even if i was sweating a lot) and the humid air was pure tonic for my scarred and still bleeding psyche.

Being naked on the beach with only a few people some distance away was comfortable and pleasant. Being in the salt water in that sun, warmth, and air was like nothing else. this trip is the first time I have been in the warm ocean (north sea/english channel/northern europe previous - didn't get in the water in Australia) - never made it in all my travel. Water here is cold. The beach here is quite uncomfortablely cold for me... not the Caribbean. I could feel the rhythm and the energy of the ocean and the waves. It was like being immersed in pedialyte... (that probably sounds really weird). The warm ocean made my body tingle like after i have ingested electrolyte balancing solutions.

Smitten said that she has never seen me live more in the moment than in that ocean, in those waves. Never seen me happier or more expressively joyful in the simple joy of my own existence.

----

I had put together this trip for my own needs - and to further my agenda of moving to the Caribbean - AND (this a a big "AND") - to "prove" to Smitten that I could "provide". That i could follow through on a promise - the promise that we would go - that all the batshit crazy ideas and dreams (which she has never thought were batshit crazy) of moving to an island in the sun could be real. that i really would cough up a trip and not an excuse as to why we couldn't go (yes, baggage, baggage, baggage...)

because i still believed (and still sort of believe [but i'm workin' on it...]) that i really wasn't worthy of her company, that she is (you'll recall my first thoughts on meeting her) "waaaayyyyy out of my league" - i had a bunch of activities planned to show her that i could at least provide awesome entertainment and a good time (in my younger years i called it "the hustle" when i was workin' the ladies...). new activities that might provide some incentive for her to keep me around (yes, yes, yes - i'm in therapy for these issues...)

(remember - this is honesty talking here - real self-image crap - not the front a person puts forward - i can rationalise with the best of them, but why bother?)

so, we went on a big trip.

(we had also just returned from a trip to Texas driving my parents to their winter place and getting over the border to Mexico (jumping obstacle 1 cleared for cadbury) - Smitten was bowled over. missed seeing Sicilian because we got delayed driving down (my Mom forgot her money belt with passport and stuff one morning [4 hours lost time]) - but that will be fixed sometime this year i hope). a big thank-you to Sicilian for finding a place that served the best fresh pecan pie we have ever tasted (smack dab in the middle of Texas pecan country) for Smitten to enjoy after she was suddenly able to eat more than brown rice and eggs again after we discovered the diagnosis and medication (us - not the doctors... they just agreed with us...)

got to meet Pissy (yay!!!). got to see historic Atlanta and a historic graveyard Smitten (and Pissy) loves graveyards - her ex-husband never wanted to go see graveyards with her (jumping obstacle 2 cleared for cadbury). MEGA shout out to Pissy for finding one with ultra-cool gargoyles and huge mini-church mausoleums and civil war graves and stuff.

went to south Florida and met some other friends. took a 10 passenger stretch limo sedan from Fort Lauderdale to West Palm Beach. just the two of us. way cool. Smitten had never been in a stretch limo before (and neither had i...) and had always wanted to (jumping obstacle 3 cleared for cadbury) i figured the best way to do florida would be to indulge every bit of cheesy fantasy and visuals from all the movies and tv shows - so a limo on the freeway was a no-brainer - i was trying to impress the lady, after all...

awesome hotel (cha-ching price, though...) in WPB (jumping obstacle 4 cleared for cadbury).

went for a helicopter excursion as Smitten had not ever been on a helicopter before (jumping obstacle 5 cleared for cadbury). it was cool - i got to fly it - the place doing the excursion was a flight school, so they threw it in as a surprise bonus (it also allowed them to count it as flight training time for their instructor to keep up with certifications and such [there is a recession on and helicopter flight training is a bit of a luxury...]. it's also a great sales tool "want to fly a helicopter - we give lessons, you know...")

that would be the cheesy visual from "Miami Vice" in the '80s - flying along the beach with all the big houses and stuff...

went for cuban food in the number one cuban restaurant north of Miami (jumping obstacle 6 cleared for cadbury) with great friends of mine (who recommended the restaurant)

flew to Puerto Rico and had good sport in the airport there waiting for our next flight - and while a kind of rattley dinged up turbo-prop aircraft is often considered less cool than a jet - it added to the adventure of the trip (jumping obstacle 7 cleared for cadbury)

arrived at the eventual island. it was great. a little rushed, confusing, and disorientingly fast coming at us - but still way cool. With the rush and bizarreness of the island and coming in at night after a long day, Smitten and I forgot her bag with her medication in the taxi (and my new $600 video camera, and her passport), though. That was a very bad bit of time - the medication is the only thing that allows her to eat like a normal human and not be in danger of serious angioedema. that was the most worrying . i was able to arrange/handle our way through the eventual recovery of the bag. yay! for honest taxi drivers and large tips that make them feel positive about the white folks they just dropped off... (jumping obstacle 8 cleared for cadbury)

(i expect you are getting sick of me counting the score and the self-congratulations - but there is a point to it)

the next morning was spectacular. the hotel was locally owned and a little less five star, but was sheer perfection from an adventure standpoint (jumping obstacle 9 cleared for cadbury). the view was breathtaking. the coffee was incredible (imported Haitian/French).

the innkeeper took us around the island personally as out tour guide so we didn't have to worry about being ripped off (better rates than the tour/taxi operators)

new year's eve in the warm

the mega-yacht harbour tour on the other end of the island

and, we took a sailing yacht tour. Smitten loves water. She loves sailboats. She used to live on the west coast of Canada and got to go on ferries, but not on sailboats - and not on a classically made - hand made - Caribbean sloop.

and not on a private tour with 3 staff (yes more than passengers), with a provided lunch on the boat and snorkeling and "rolly waves" (it was a big waves, gorgeous, sunny day).

in a word: perfection

she looked so incredibly beautiful to me. i was moved every moment of that day.

when she asked me what i was feeling, i told her: "if i die at this very moment - my life is fulfilled. you are everything i have dreamed of in my life. being here with you today, is everything i have dreamed of in my life."

the day ended with a trip to a hilltop restaurant that served amazing local cuisine (i had the curried conch, Smitten had a baked fish dish)

when we arrived back at the inn, she told me she was tired and got ready for bed. she said that she didn't know how long she would be able to stay awake.

i did nothing.

i copied the day's pictures and videos to the computer and left her alone.

that's what my programming told me to do.

tired is a code word in my programming for "stay away"

you see, i was filled with anxiety that i was not making the mark. that i was not up to snuff. i felt fat. i felt sweaty. i felt less than the goddess i was with.

the idea of anything else was so outside the box for me, it was inconceivable. in my mind i was lucky that she would even deign to spend time with me.

so when she was hurt that i didn't finish the "perfect romance" of the day by wanting to make love with her... it was like getting hit by a log on a chain.

so much for score 10 for cadbury

the perfect day sailing on the ocean still didn't make me good enough to be with her

i was, in what the kids on the bulletin boards would call, total fail

----

the next day around noon it occurred to me

without having millions of dollars

this was about as close to perfection a trip could ever be - the only thing that could beat a custom built wooden sloop and a private cruise might be hot-air ballooning in southern France (yes - that, as well, has long been on the list of things to do to impress Smitten). Smitten herself called this Caribbean adventure "the trip of my [her] life".

and if it still wasn't good enough - if this trip and all the stuff i had arranged - all the cool activities - how could anything i ever do be enough?

(you see- that was the hustle with the ladies - always being able to one up my last gig - my last bit of exotic excitement - and it would fall apart when i ran out of things to impress them with - when there was only me left - well - i was never good enough - and the anxiety would crush and destroy me... and then there was the stbx - who demanded bigger and better every single event - and punished the living shit out of me if it wasn't fully unique every Christmas, birthday, valentine's day, vacation... and demanded that the bigger and better only ever cost 4 bucks...)

and i knew that it was in my head

that i was the one that didn't measure up to my expectations of me

and i realised

and i decided

that if the ultimate awesomo trip couldn't make me feel secure enough in being with Smitten, then nothing would

and that at some point i would have to give up

because i wasn't going to be able to top this one (very often...)

i would have to give up and let her decide whether she wanted to be with me

to accept that i was either good enough or not

that i was good enough

worthwhile enough

just as a human being

for her to want to spend time with me - just for who i am

not for what i can do for her

to begin to understand, to begin to accept, that i really am intrinsically a worthwhile human being

----

So down here on the ocean we will stay

We will stay

We will stay

Went through a lot of changes

Turned a lot of pages

When I took a boat on Sunday...