Out of my depths, treading water

Spent the last few days trying to get sorted out and unpacked and get living arrangements made.  Apparently Dragon's Egg is a frozen wasteland, a lot different from what I'm used to.  I'm told there's not a lot of settlers actually *living* on the surface right now, but my info is sketchy.  I never was one to keep up with all the news of the 'Verse outside my little sphere of influence, and my time with Elsoph kept me mostly insulated from any concerns save power converters and ion drives.

So now, I sit.  I wait.  I read the Cortex, trying to get some sort of handle on what all has happened in my absence, learn about this new world I've come back to, learn what happened to my old world, learn what happened to my loved ones.

It's also a good time to think about my life, where I'm going, what I'm doing.  I'm not as young or as painfully optimistic as I once was, working on the Core wore that away long ago. Certainly I'm no bitter cynic yet, but maybe not so obnoxiously cheerful as I once was.  I'm still the best damn mechanic (technically, thanks to Elsoph's wrangling, 'Engineer Class A-II' ) that you've ever seen, but I find I need to learn how to better live in this world than hiding out and building stuff.

I want to protect my loved ones, like Sea does.  I want to not be afraid of danger when (not if) it comes knocking.  Learn to shoot, not just whack things with a wrench.  I've already got the first lesson, down, I think. I've learned that I can do whatever I put my mind to do, and I'll do whatever I have to do.  Because that's who I am.

It feels strange to have Seana be the busy one for once.  There's so much going on, and I'm beginning to feel useless here.  Maybe that's my karmic payback for being away for so long; now it's my turn to wait.  I want to help and I don't know how.  So all I can do is read the news and watch my old Vids from Earth-that-Was.

Guess I'll put in one of those old outer-space shows.  They always make me laugh and cheer me up 'cos their tech is SOOOOOO wrong. I'll curl up with Haley, thankfully she still remembers me, and nibble on some cookies.

You can go home again.. but is it still home?

There’s not a lot of constants in this ‘verse of ours.  Definitely not a lot of constants in our lives out here on the Ragged torn-thumbnail of frontier spacelife.  But as a wise man on Earth-that-Was once said, the only certainties in life are death and taxes.  That still seems to hold up pretty true here.  But the other constant is that time marches on, and nothing ever stays exactly the same. 

So here’s me, once again logging stuff down on this little cortex diary thing I’ve had since I first picked up a screwdriver.  I left it on our boat when I took off for the Core to help Uncle Elsoph with his various engineering projects for Seana’s family corporation. I wonder if I’dve been better off taking it with me and using it. 

It’s been over a year now since I left.  I got wrapped up in my work.  Didn’t want to think about all the stuff that had gone on, a lot of it was just too much to process.  Revelations about Lilybell, and AuroraBlue, how that changed mine and Seana’s lives, all the upheaval going on down on Hale’s..  Partially, I did it to help Elsoph, and because he dangled the irresistible carrots of playing with shiny new technology in front of me, and the exoticness of finally living and seeing how the other half live on the Core worlds. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that part of the reason I left, and part of the reason I stayed so long is because I was lying to myself, and trying to ignore all the stuff I couldn’t process.

I couldn’t sleep at night.  Without Seana by my side, sleep was almost impossible.  I tried to substitute body pillows, but it didn’t have her smell, couldn’t wrap arms around me or nuzzle into my neck.  It got to the point where I would just work and work and work until I fell over from sheer exhaustion.  I don’t think anyone realized what was wrong or what I was doing to myself, except maybe for Elsoph.  Maybe he realized I had my own demons to burn out, maybe not, but I don’t know why he let me do it;  maybe because we had so many deadlines and I’m a damned good engineer, sleep deprived or no.  Or maybe because sleep deprivation puts you in that slightly crazy frame of mind where the most insane thing s suddenly make perfect sense and you can pull off amazing miracles?  I don’t know.

Right now I’m fighting new demons. The demons that tell me I was a bad wife.  That I neglected my partner’s needs and let her be alone when she needed me most.  The time on the station had an effect on me, too.  I let myself go, eating nothing but processed Blue Sun burritos and Hot Pockets and Pop Tarts.  My hair looks like hell and I’ve put on weight.  I was never by any stretch of the imagination skinny, but now I’ve definitely got a bit of a belly and love handles. 

My home was destroyed, and I barely even registered it on an emotional level.  Apparently some terraforming mishap on Hale’s and the whole place went blooey;  fortunately, it was a slow kablooey so most folks got off safe, even if they weren’t able to always take al their stuff with them.  I’m told we’re parked above another rock, and I suppose one frontier colony is much the same as another, but still, I’m going to miss Hale’s Moon. 

I woke up recently, and realized I’d changed a lot in a year.  Maybe living on the core has jaded me, or maybe just being away from loved ones for so long, but I don’t feel as optimistic as I used to, or as innocent.  I certainly don’t feel young anymore.  I feel old, and worn out, and used up.  But I also know now that the love I have for my wife kept me going, as well as my love for the wacky ‘kids’ that came into our lives.  That’s one of the things that changed over this year; Me, who thought I never wanted kids, ever, suddenly taking to ‘em.. well, at least the older ones, not so muc h the babies.  I used to spend time with the kids on the station , and I got to be like an Aunt to them.  They even threw me a going away party when I announced that I finally had to come home.

In the end, it got to be too much. I felt like I either was going to kill myself or wither away to nothing if I didn’t go home. I missed my wife, my friends, my family, and my frontier.  The Core was too clean, too civilized, too sterile for my tastes. 

I didn’t even send Seana a wave.  Just hopped the next boat out and kept hopping boats ‘til I got to this new rock we’re parked over, and showed up knocking on the boat’s airlock door, looking disheveled and sheepish when Seana opened the door.  What do you say to your wife for the first time in over a year, what makes up for being gone so long?  What can repair the vacuum between two people that have been apart for so long, one of whom desperately needs the other, needs to know that things haven’t been irreparably damaged to the point of failure?

“I’m home.”