The Take Off – Battling Seasickness

My immediate family isn’t that large, there’s just me, my brother, and our parents. But even though we’re a small bunch, we all lead such busy lives that sometimes it can be difficult to find the time to spend together. Even at home, we have a tendency to hermit in our rooms doing out own things. We’ve long since stopped taking our dinners together since everyone’s schedule is so different, that eating alone has become a norm. But even though we’re each so independent in our own lives, we’ve always maintained the one tradition of taking a big trip together each and every year.

Ever since I could remember, my family has always enjoyed the excitement of travel, and we constantly go to new places each year to explore what our planet has to offer. We don’t do the typical tropical locales and only just really began exploring farther south within the past couple of years. Last year we took a trip down to Mexico, and this year we did our first ever cruise to Bermuda.

Leading up to the trip, I kept geting asked if I was excited. The obvious answer would have been “heck yes!” since I was going someplace warm and would get to spend some time with blue water and white sand, but I found myself hesitating and mustering a “…yeah… it’ll be fun”. And no, it wasn’t because I didn’t want to spend time with my family, nor was I feeling ungrateful that we’d only be going to Bermuda (I actually had an extremely good time!), but it was because I wasn’t looking forward to the cruise aspect of the trip.

I’ve always had a mild case of seasickness, verging on the side of motion sickness in general, but anything related to water (besides swimming in it) makes me feel squeamish. I’ve always secretly been happy that we flew to our destinations (or drove – my dad loves long distance driving), and was glad that the idea of a cruise never really came up. But when you get invited to a trip, you don’t exactly get the opportunity to criticize or complain. You just do you.

Naturally my anxiety flared up due to the anticipated seasickness and I didn’t even bother to pack until the night before. Which is actually really weird, because I often start planning the belongings that I want to bring a whole week before we even leave. I almost didn’t even want to go at one point from just thinking about the rocking of the boat. I ruminated on it for awhile but finally decided that I couldn’t cop out of a family vacation, so I felt that I’d do my best and suck it up for the #famjam.

When it comes to being seasick, I don’t have the traditional vomiting sessions that instantly comes to everyone’s mind. Instead I just feel like I’m perma-drunk and that the floors are never steady. It feels like I’m on a never-ending roller coaster and that I’m being jolted around a turn every 5 minutes. And although I could just take medication that would knock me out so that I don’t experience the motions of the ship, I’d much rather be conscious for the entirety of the trip instead of being passed out the entire time. Chewing on mint has long been my solution to my nausea, so picking up a pack of spearmint gum at the closest Walgreen’s to our port was probably the best idea that I’ve had all month.

I popped a piece as soon as we boarded and felt right as rain. The minty freshness gave me enough time to explore the ship while our staterooms were being readied and I had some fun checking out the different balconies as well as the pool. But after spending 8 hours in a car driving down to New Jersey to catch our cruise, the only thing that I really wanted to do was to lay down on the pool beds and enjoy the view of New Jersey fading into the distance and the water turning bluer by the second – which is weird considering the motion of a moving ship caused by the waves is really what throws me off.

 

The trip going to Bermuda took roughly 3 days, so yes I did do other things besides just laying by the pool all day long. I won’t share just yet since this post is already long enough as is, but there’s so much that I want to talk about! Fortunately for you guys, I will for sure share it all, as long as you’re willing to come back for the updates!

Top – Garage | Shorts – H&M | Shoes – Converse | Bag – c/o Dynamite