vallyn murphy

Video Transcript:

In spring, 2007, I was a senior in high school. I was a little bit geeky, and a lot of bit private, and I spent a lot of time by myself. Because of this, I really started connecting to things that seemed like normal, everyday objects to everybody else, but to me, it was my stuff.

My stuff was comics I religiously tore out of the newspaper, every single day, and stuffed into a binder, and never looked at again. So, 2007 memes. My first gray hair, that I got when I was 16, that I put into a purple CD case. And best of all, was just my collection of dozens of Coke bottles, that lined the perimeter of my room, like little soldiers. So I was a mini hoarder.

Unsurprisingly, at this time, my parents decided I needed to get out of the house. So when the opportunity came for me to go on a study abroad trip with my senior class, we jumped at it.

I was going to go on a 10-day cruise to Greece and Turkey. I was pretty excited, so I brought some really good stuff with me, and there I went. I learned about where math was invented, and time itself, and philosophy. And all of that was really great. But the best part was the souvenirs.

In Athens, I got leather goods. In Mykonos, I got a fake Prada bag. In Turkey, I got enough evil eye jewelry to never have anybody look at me bad again. I was so excited.

On the day of my 18th birthday, I was turning 18 on this trip, I was on the cruise. It was the second to the last day of the cruise. I went up to the top deck, and I just reveled in the stuff. I was going to call my parents, and get some serious birthday love.

Then I heard a noise. I looked over the railing, and I saw, in this crystal water, just blackness start to fill the water, and these ribbons of rainbows on the surface. Then behind me, I heard pounding. I looked, and it was coming from the elevator. The deck elevator. People on the elevator were saying that they were stuck, and they couldn't get out.

Just then, I looked at the elevator, and the seam that holds it together begins to tilt. And then I felt my body begin to tilt, because the whole ship was tilting.

The sound I heard earlier was the cruise ship hitting the side of Santorini, Greece, and oil was spilling into the Aegean Sea. The ship was sinking. I looked at the elevator doors, and I was like, these people are getting saved. I need to go get saved. I need to get saved.

So I ran down the deck stairs, and I heard the emergency announcements in Portuguese, and German, and in French. By the time they did English, I couldn't hear anything. People were screaming real, actual, terrified screams. People were running around naked, who didn't seem like they wanted to be naked. People were saying the pool overflowed on them, and that doors burst open behind them.

I was hit really hard, and I fell on the ground. I felt pain in my foot, so I stayed there a second, and I looked at the bar. The bartender jumped over the bar. Right when he did, glasses just above him just shattered behind him. Out of the bar loudspeakers, crescendoed the Madonna version of Don't Cry For Me, Argentina.

So I found my group. At this point, everything was chaos. The crew was doing the best they could, but the ship was completely tilted. So out of the right porthole was the sky, and out of the left, the dark blue water, and you had to hold onto something.

So the crew came. People ... We were so close to Santorini that other boats saw us in peril, and came. So there were dinghies, and fishermen ships, and ferries, and a battleship. So they started evacuating everybody. They were like, "Women and children only."

And I was like, "Oh, that's like Titanic."

I climbed down the side, the belly of the ship, I climbed down the wooden ladder, and they put me into a fisherman's dinghy. That's when it hit me. I was like, "Whoa. What about my stuff? What about the necklace my little sister gave me for good luck? Or all the souvenirs that got my big sister? What about my stuff, the evidence, of my first trip abroad?"

After I got off of, after I was rescued, and I was on the dock, I sat on a pile of ropes, and I looked at this 10 deck ship, sinking with the sun.

So my chaperone came around, and she handed me a phone. She was like, "Call your family."

I did. My mom answered, and she started singing Happy Birthday. I immediately stopped her by sobbing, and saying, "My ship sank. All my stuff is gone."

Then the phone got cut off. I'm sure that they were horrified, but in that moment, I was just thinking, who's going to tell me what to do? What do I do?

So there were 1500 people on the ship that needed to disperse, so they could kind of figure out what was going on, so they took my group to the top of Santorini, and we found rest at this bar. They put us under heat lamps, because we were in shock. Some people had their shoes washed away, and they were wet. So there we were. We sat there for a couple of hours. Then someone nudged me. I looked up, and the wait staff of the bar had gathered around me, in a circle, and somebody placed an apple pie, with a single candle on top, in front of me, and they sang me Happy Birthday. I was so happy in that moment, that even though this disaster happened, that somebody remembered it was my birthday. So I licked the candle, and I put it into my pocket. That was some of my new stuff.

At dawn, we went back down the island, and they were like, "Hey, here's a new cruise ship you have to get on." Wasn't really thrilled about that, but they hijack your passport when you get on a cruise ship, so they had our passports safe, so they just baited us with them. They were like, "If you want this back, you need to." And it was the only way to go, so there we go.

We get on the ship, and they gave us a bottle of wine, which they gave everybody, including children, a gigantic T-shirt, and a toothbrush. So that was also some of my new stuff.

After the boat, after a car, after two planes, we finally get home, and I'm at the airport. I'm at RDU. When I get to airport, I was singing. Then I was skipping. Then I was running. When I got to the top of the escalator, just banners, balloons, news cameras, just hit me like a wall. I saw my family, and I just fell into my father's arms. It was the happiest moment of my life. I was safe.

And, at that exact same time, there was an AP photographer who took a picture of me, crying as hard as I can. So now, if you google my name, the first thing that pops up is that picture. And it's a Getty Image, so it's never going away.

Next to the photo, and when they interviewed me, there was a caption that I said, that said, "I'm alive. I just lost my stuff, but it's only stuff." Which I don't know if I was trying to be noble, or thought I was mature, or what, but it was a lie. I spent the next several weeks trying to buy back everything that I lost.

I looked for dresses that I lost, but they weren't in my size. I looked for perfume, but it was discontinued. I tried to buy back my copy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. That was my assigned reading for spring break, but couldn't find that. So my teacher just gave me an A for that. I was like, wow, that worked out really well.

Now, over a decade later, I would love to say that I'm over it, but I can't. I wonder what the state of that stuff looks like, at the bottom of the ocean, all the time. Also, I brought a waterproof camera, so maybe it's fine.

I may never be relieved of wondering, but at least I have my life to try.