In the Middle of the Night

Its that time again, just after 3 am when I wake to what I can only describe as a wave of fear.  Again.  A surge of adrenaline rushes through my body and I am driven into the waking world.  As I surface from my dream, I feel a knot in my stomach slowly twisting into form.  I know now that there is no point to rolling over and trying to go back to sleep, it just won’t come until the chemicals in my body run their course.  If I tried, I’d just wear out my pillow and twist my covers into a ball.  Instead, I reach for my computer after reading the emails that wait there for me I get up and have a cigarette, that doesn’t help it only makes my heart race and my head feel dizzy.

I try to live my life according to a simple idea, just take one step at a time.  I image I’m walking through a stream stepping on one stone at a time, not concerning myself with the other side just the shape and texture of the stones beneath my feet.  Despite my best efforts I worry about the next stone, will it be sturdy, will the path I’m taking lead to a hole I can’t get out of.  The human condition.

Tonight, the the stress that wakes me is work related.  I have put myself into a situation that creates a lot of opportunities for stress.  You see, I’m a woman who works in the engine room of a ship.  Its not my entire life’s vocation but one I chose as a career change when I turned 40.  Why you might ask did I choose this particular path?  I started out by thinking about what I would do on a year long sabbatical I had planned from myself.  A break from my work as a management consultant.  I decided that I wanted to get out from behind a desk and be on the ocean, a love of mine.  One decision lead to another and in the end I held a wrench in my hand.  Strangely, I love the work.  I like to get dirty, to work physically and to learn new things.  Its the environment that difficult.  I work month on, month off in 12 hour days, 7 days a week.  I work with all men.  I’m the only woman in a 14 man crew.

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

For most of my life I’ve resisted the idea of feminism, thinking that people are just people.  But then, by working so intensely with men I realize I was being very naive.  Life brought me a book by Gloria Steinem and I read for the first time some history of the women’s movement in the 60’s.  As I read, I started to recognize the types of discrimination I had been experiencing at work.  When I chose to go into the engine room I didn’t think much about the fact that I would be working with mostly men.  At the time, I didn’t see it as a significant factor.  Over time, I’ve seen how unprepared I was for what I would experience.  At first, I took it all in and thought that I could work it out by working on myself.  Being more patient, more understanding and they will come around.  When I got overwhelmed I would retreat to my cabin and cry to relieve the pressure. 

Once in a while the women of the ships would get together for dinner when we were alongside.  On one of these occasions a fellow female engineer who used to work on our ship mentioned that when she was there she used to cry all the time.  Suddenly I didn’t feel so alone.  She couldn’t put her finger on what the issue was she just knew she didn’t feel right.  As I worked my way through “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, Gloria helped me to see the subtle ways that gender culture was impacting my life.  Subtle messages that made me feel inferior to the men around me.  She helped me see that men assume a position of dominance over women and just doing my job challenged that dominance because I was doing it in their world.  After almost 50 years of women’s rights movement so little has really changed, for one simple reason.  Men don’t want to give up their dominance.  But, that is the way of the animal kingdom.  As much as I’d like to believe that humans have evolved beyond the animal brain it clear we are deeply driven by these instincts.

Slowly, a feeling started to develop – a feeling that I really didn’t want to be at work anymore.  I left the ship one day to write a test and didn’t want to go back.  With each shift I worked the feeling got stronger, it affected my state of mine and my body.  I got angry more easily, I felt tired all the time.  I had a hard time holding back the tears.  Finally, I started to talk.  To tell people around me what I was experiencing, I started to say it wasn’t okay.  I made an appointment with an EAP counsellor and began to talk with her. Eventually, I decided to take some time off to consider what was happening to me.  To let my body rest and allow my mind to unwind.  To choose me.  So, here I sit at 3 am.