independence – On the Horizon Line

Sunset photo taken by Rachel Stewart at Papamoa Beach.

My Own Alone Space

I’m on a bus. Alone. The seat beside me is empty, save for a sandwich, a bottle of water, and my Kindle. It feels empty without Rob beside me, his long legs askew and his hand on my thigh. It also feels undeniably spacious. And that’s the theme I’m exploring this week: space.

I’m heading to a peninsula jutting into the cold Pacific waters off New Zealand’s North Island. Rob is flying to American Samoa to visit a buddy from his Peace Corps days. I didn’t want to go for a number of reasons: money, travel time, the fact that we just left a very similar setting. But the main reason was to create some space.

I love Rob more than most things on this planet. I love him even more fiercely after our travels together. But we haven’t spent more than 24 hours apart in the past year. Hell, it’s rare that we spend more than two hours away from each other. As independent, self-sufficient people, that’s kinda weird. And sometimes unsettling – what if we become too dependent on the other to spend time apart?

Solo explorations infuse our relationship with new energy, and give us the freedom to disengage from the sometimes too-comfortable couple circle we present to the rest of the world. It’s hard to break into a circle, so the space inside can get stagnant. We do better together when we take a little time to explore the world alone. Separately. Individually.

Being alone provides a completely different space for my thoughts and my body. I move differently, am more observant, more quiet, more spontaneous. I can eat what I want, when I want. I can read all day or write all night. The space I usually allot to Rob is waiting, beckoning, a blank slate to fill as I’d like.

This last year is the longest I’ve gone without an “alone time” trip of my own. During our relationship, I’ve spent at least one hundred nights away from Rob — for work, for fun, for me. For us. All of these trips created a different energy in the space vacated by my husband. It’s always a pleasure to see what wiggles into that space when I’m alone. Sometimes it’s chaos, sometimes it’s peace. It’s always enlightening.

Today, I’m on a bus alone. I’m going on an adventure to see what I can find. I’m following my feet wherever they take me, knowing that – in the end – they will take me back to Rob, where we will reunite to share our stories, our space, ourselves.

rob and bri sailing adventure travel blog tonga vavau beaches

Reflections on Life, Sailing

Entering A Waking Dream

We have yet another new home. Her name is Waking Dream, a 42-foot Cooper monohull owned by Ben and Lisa Newton here in Vava’u. They sailed her from Oakland, California and spent three years cruising before deciding to stay in Tonga. Now that they live on Fetoko Island and are building Mandala Resort, Waking Dream has been vacant for a while. And we know what happens to vacant sailboats: they start to crumble under the relentless tropical sun and saltwater.

Rob and I offered to help get her all fixed up in return for a free place to live. It’s a good deal for everyone. We get to learn more about maintaining a sailboat and build our own little nest. Ben and Lisa get a working sailboat. What are some of the problems with it, you ask? I’ll just list the top few for now: #1 termites #2 the coral reef living on the bottom #3 disintegrating dodger and algae-covered lines. It’s nice to have a purpose again.

It also feels good to be living on the water again. And it feels really good to be all by ourselves on a sailboat again. We haven’t felt like the capitans of our own space for over 8 months now, since we’ve been sharing living quarters on boats and in others’ homes. It actually felt slightly eerie to make dinner for just the two of us last night. For three-quarters of a year, we’ve shared meals with at least one other person, and lately it’s been more like 6-10 others. Neither of us could remember the last night we’d spent with no one else around.

Transitioning from communal living to independent living is probably more of a change than moving back to the sea from the shore. We are both quite comfortable cohabiting with others — we enjoy the social dynamics of sharing space, food, ideas, chores, music and ourselves with more than just each other. Yet we’re both quite comfortable alone, too. I, in particular, crave my alone time almost as much as I crave social interaction.

What a strange and beautiful paradox, this human pull to be so close to others in tandem with the pull to have our own individual corners to retreat into. A yin and yang of co-dependence and independence, where finding the balance is the magic ingredient to a fulfilling life. Here aboard Waking Dream, we hope to strike that balance, to build our own little nest where we can retreat, while still keeping close to the flock of new friends who support us.