A ship adrift and lost at sea

We drift like damaged goods in high sea. Torn ships looking for a safe harbor where we can mend our wounds and repair our sliced-up facades. But the shelters only show themselves as silhouettes in the mist. We never really get there.

Occasionally, though, the wind slows, the clouds shatter and the sun reaches down to please our torn bodies. We get some seconds of peace to patch up the worst damages and maybe even mend the rudder.

We focus on keeping our ship afloat and barely take time to restore what has been moved inside the hull by the storm. We do what is most necessary. And we are happy. We survived once more. We do not ever drown, our sails are ok, and the rudder is once again in place. And we believe that we will manage the next storm as well. After all, neither this storm killed us.

But we are still damaged. A little more than before as our patchwork is just that. Patchwork. Our rudder is weakened and our façade is barely held together by rusty nails. And we are still drifting at sea when the next storm hits us with full force. This time it is worse. We are tired and hungry. Our ship is weakened and we don’t really understand why we fight anymore.

The wind never completely disappears and the fight never ends. We fight for moments of peace, and then we fight some more but we come more and more adrift and lost. But just occasionally, we reach harbor. We anchor up but when we try to unload our cargo, we realize that even if we leave our ship, we are destined to carry our load by ourselves until we find someone willing to carry it for us.

So we do our best to repair our ship. We fix it the real way. We do not mend boards with rusty nails and stitch sails with wet thread. We work from the ground up and we work hard and eventually the ship is ready to sail again. But we carry our load with us. No one wanted it. It was damaged goods, so we carry it back onboard. And if we ever leave our safe haven we carry the load with us.

So we set out to sail with a nice façade. But his time we carry just bit more load than the last time.

And history repeats itself.