The 2GO Maligaya Wasn't So Maligaya — But We Were.

It's fifty-four minutes past midnight, and something pulls me out of sleep.

It's the sound first — the heavy clang of mooring lines slipping free and the anchor coming up, metal against metal, and voices calling out somewhere in the dark as the ship makes ready to get underway. And then, beneath all of it, I feel it: the sway. The slow, deep rock of a vessel beginning to move. Beside me, Lyn doesn't stir. But I'm awake now — fully — the way you are when the world quietly shifts beneath you.

We're leaving.

We planned this trip two months out, and I'll admit I'd built it up in my head.

Because this is my first time on a ship like this. Not my first time on a ship, mind you — I've ridden ferries back and forth more times than I can count, and I’ve been on a Naval vessels steel deck once or twice in my life. Surface ships, both. I even climbed down inside a submarine once, though it sat tied to the pier the whole time, so I can't honestly say it ever took me anywhere. But all of it was about getting somewhere, or getting something done. I've never been on a ship you actually live on for a stretch — a cabin, sleep at sea, waking at fifty-four minutes past midnight to the anchor coming up and a whole night of open water still ahead. This is the first time the ship itself is the point.

And maybe that's why I'm up at this hour, at a table, the ship eerily quiet, save the constant hum of the engine, half-whispering notes into my phone like a man who's lost it — while a few of my fellow passengers keep glancing over, no doubt wondering what exactly I'm doing. Let them wonder. I'm just trying to hold onto this one.

Now, I'll be honest: this trip hasn't matched the brochure.

We were supposed to leave at nine. We left just before one in the morning — the better part of four hours late, dock lights still burning, cargo still being sorted somewhere below. The cabin we booked turned out a good deal smaller than the wide-angle photos promised, no window, just room enough for the two bunks and a sliver of floor that disappeared the moment our luggage came in. "Linen included," the listing said — it wasn’t, instead we stood in a line in the middle of the night for a blanket, after handing over an ID to hold as collateral. And the air-conditioning runs off the ship's original Japanese control panel, not a word of English or Filipino on it; I turned the dial all the way up to thirty-five and the room only got colder, until somewhere around half past two I gave up and shut the whole thing off.

I could go on. I've got the screenshots. There's a part of me that started keeping a list.

But here's what I keep landing on. More often than not, what we hold in the mind's eye isn't quite what plays out. And maybe it's a good thing I've been working through those Zen books lately — because there's a version of me, on a different night, who'd have let every one of these things get under his skin. Who'd have gone hunting for a manager. Turned into a karen — or whatever it is we're meant to call the male of the species. I didn't. I chose to stay — in the actual experience, instead of the one I'd drawn up in my head two months ago. This was never the big dream anyway: not the Camino, not Santiago. Just a smaller, second-tier item on the bucket list — ride a slow boat across the sea, twenty-odd hours, no rush, nowhere to be.

But underneath all of it was something that mattered more than any single snag.

Somewhere in the small hours, I started to see it in Lyn's eyes — the frustration. Because she's the one who planned this. She bought the tickets. And she only did it because I said I wanted to give it a try. Normally, getting to Cebu is nothing: we book PAL or Cebu Pacific, show up at the airport an hour or two early, hop on a plane, and we're there within the hour. This time, by every practical measure, we'd "wasted" a whole day on a boat where half of what was promised never showed up.

I could see all of that settling on her. She'd done this for me — and when it started going wrong, she was the one it hurt. Frustrated. Hurt. Disappointed that the thing she'd arranged as a gift wasn't turning out the way she'd pictured it. So I kept calm, cool, collected, and I told her what I actually believe — that the pluses outweigh the minuses, and it isn't close. A late boat and a freezing cabin and a blanket I traded my ID for don't hold a candle to this: being here, with her, just the two of us. Well — the two of us and a few hundred strangers. But you know what I mean.

There's a small thing that happened that I keep coming back to.

We had bunk beds — and Lyn didn't want the top one. She wanted to pull the mattress down and sleep on the floor instead, but there simply wasn't room; the cabin barely held the two of us standing. So she gave in and climbed back up top. And I lay there in the cold feeling lousy about it, until I finally said — come down, we'll both fit on the bottom.

She didn't want to. Not because she didn't want to be close, but because she was worried about me. It'll be too tight, she said. You won't sleep. Even then — middle of a long, cold, gone-sideways night — she was thinking of me first. How did I ever deserve this woman?

I talked her into it. And we lay there in that narrow bunk, snug against each other, and it worked. Most of the cold melted away — the kind in the cabin, and maybe the other kind too.

They say you really find out who a person is when their luggage gets lost. I think this is a version of that. And what I'm finding out, here in the dark with the ship rocking beneath us, is simple enough: Lyn and I are going to get frustrated. We're going to get angry, let down, worn thin by things that refuse to go to plan. That's a given. But through all of it, the thing that matters — maybe the only thing — is that we're together, and we're seeing it through together.

Isn't that what a marriage is supposed to be, anyway?