Land Legs

Adjusting back to sleeping on land after sailing in the British Virgin Islands

After I arrive back home from the sailing holiday, I have a recurring dream where I wake up on the top deck of the boat. I feel the house rocking in the waves. I properly wake up and because my bedroom is about the same width as the seating area on the boat, and the furniture is in a similar arrangement, in the half light I can’t bring myself back to land. And besides, the house is swaying, so I must be at sea. 

I can’t stop the house from swaying. 

At work, when I am busy and stressed, my brain tilts side to side and my eyes struggle to settle on the horizon. I want to be back on a yacht in the Caribbean. 

There’s nothing else for it: I must run. I must plant my feet firmly into the earth and tell my body that we are no longer at sea.

This is easier said than done after so much time either sitting down or being held aloft swimming in salty water. I feel incredibly unfit and astoundingly heavy. I tell myself repeatedly that this is a temporary state, this is not how running will always feel, within a few more runs I’ll be back to feeling more spritely. I’m trying to tell myself that I’m starting afresh. 

That’s what a holiday is supposed to do, right? It’s supposed to allow you to start afresh. 

I wade through the week, sleep deprived and incrementally frazzled. It’s only a matter of days before the physical symptoms of my anxiety are manifesting again. But at night, I am beneath a clear, starry sky, listening to the tender (dinghy) slosh in the waves, listening to the subtle creaks of the boat. It is our last night and I am lying on the top deck with dad sitting nearby, mum and sister settling downstairs, other boats winding down. I can’t keep my eyes open. I drift off to sleep.

And this is how I drift back to sleep here, on land, clinging to the memory of those gentle nights.