The Mad Hatter at Sea

The Mad Hatter at Sea

Being a sailor on a submarine does something to you. Isolation becomes your constant companion. Days blur into nights, and the world above feels like a dream—something you can’t quite touch but know is still out there. When you’re submerged for weeks, even months, your mind changes. You learn to live in your own head, to embrace a quiet kind of madness. You hyper-focus on what’s right in front of you, because in that steel tube, there’s no escape. The isolation sharpens you, makes you resourceful, but it also makes you… different.

Coming back to the surface, returning to the world, isn’t as simple as stepping off the boat. The world feels louder, faster, too chaotic to make sense of. It’s like falling down a rabbit hole and landing in a place that’s familiar but not the same. You’re not the same. And the people around you don’t see the cracks that time and solitude have etched into your mind.

That’s where the Mad Hatter comes in. He’s a little crazy, a little eccentric, but he owns it. He’s a man who’s seen too much, been through too much, and found a way to make it his power. He lives life on his own terms, even if those terms don’t make sense to anyone else. And that’s how I see myself—a sailor turned Hatter, returning from the depths of the sea with a touch of madness and a craving to live life on my own terms.

But even the Mad Hatter has moments when the chaos subsides. For him, that’s Alice. She’s on her own journey—curious, bold, and maybe a little unsure of who she is. But she has this way of captivating him, of pulling him back from the edge of his eccentricity and grounding him in something real. She doesn’t change him; she balances him.

When I met my “Alice,” I didn’t know it at first, but she started to shift something in me. After so much time alone, you build walls, thick ones, to protect yourself. But she had a way of slipping past them, not by force, but by simply being herself. She was on her own path, full of questions and discoveries, and all I wanted to do was follow her, to see the world through her eyes.

Being a sailor changes you, and so does meeting the right woman at the right time. She made me want to be better—not just for her, but for myself. She reminded me that there’s life beyond the edges of my own madness, beyond the hyper-focus and isolation. Together, we’re two travelers, each on our own journey but somehow connected, making the trip a little more meaningful.

I don’t know how far this road will take us, but I know one thing: she’s worth the trip. And in the end, I hope we’ll both come out of this better for it—her with a little of my wildness, and me with a little of her grounding light.

After all, even the Mad Hatter deserves a chance to find balance in the madness.