I have not lived variously enough to have my own story, so instead I will tell the story of my mother figure. We live on a boat called the Forty Foot, and on it I have grown from infancy to childhood to adolescence. The Forty Foot is orange and below deck is a propane stove where we boil water for hot chocolate. There’s a pump-to-flush toilet. The windows are round or diamond-shaped. The blankets are plaid wool, and the pillows are plastic sacks stuffed with feathers. Our Town in the distance rhythmically blackens then glows. Sometimes there are other boats, heavier with beer than people, far off though borne by the same waves.
I do not know how my mother figure produces fresh water or where she finds the potatoes and cherries and spinach that keep me energetic, that keep my muscles long and firm. Or how we prevent the boat from capsizing, or how often and where we dock, or how far away the Town really is, brightening, darkening, most visible during our nightly aerobics.
Late in life, my mother figure found me, a baby in a trash compactor. She had started living as a man when she entered the monastery: with bound breasts and loose robes she nearly passed, and the gentle indifference of her brothers made up the deficit. The monks went on supply runs (flour, salt, sugar, and matches), and frequently stopped for hamburgers while travelling home. This was when she found me, and discarded her old life in the same second she discarded her milkshake. She tells me that my life is the life she once craved.
Her early years are a mystery to me. I know at eight she ran from her home when her mother didn’t believe what was happening. Even though in words and gestures and drawings, in bedwetting, in nightmares, she told her. I understood, for in my own early years, I too could barely believe in my mother figure’s former life. How had it actually happened? It made me feel boring. It made me feel naive. She spoke, and I felt stupid. How did I know enough of the world to feel stupid? How did I know enough of the world to feel boring? But this is her story, not mine. I have not lived variously enough to have my own story.
I want to tell you how it feels to have only lived one way. To have only spoken to one person. Even I know that my true spirit is empty. Even I know that my true soul is barren. My mother figure tells me I have not developed empathy. And I’ve prodded my heart and found it cold; I’ve caught my own eye and hurled it back.
I understand that as humans grow they experience cycles of pain and disorder, they love and lose each other, they are exalted and cherished and then shamed and broken, and out of these cycles they form their stories and, in turn, their natures. But I have no stories of my own, for my every moment has been observed, and nothing has ever belonged solely to me. Some days I talk to the fish until my mouth goes dry. I have spent so long examining my face that its actual features are a mystery to me.
As a child, I was made to feel extraordinarily grateful for my own suffering. At the time I had no idea who or what I was becoming, just that it was other. How quickly I became what they despised.
I fill myself with the stories of my mother figure, for it lends shading and resonance to my life, and it brings her peace. Sometimes, in thinking through these stories, I substitute my name for hers. She has told me that this empathy exercise could be dangerous, but still she has given consent and encouragement. She wants her stories to become mine, too, so the burden is divided and she is freed, slightly, from her captivity. I submit to my mother figure’s various waves. There is no retreat from her water and light. I want to produce human feeling within myself; I want to coax my own nature to fruition, for every plant I’ve tended and every creature I’ve netted died in its youth. And, despite the data of my life, I know nothing of the bottom of the sea, except that it’s also called cruel.