49/52 - Leaving the Boat (an overextended metaphor)

"Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more." - Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Dear Internauts,

Imagine spending your whole life on a boat. Every day is about the nautical. Everything is the sea and the parts of the boat and everything to do with sailing. You've seen land maybe but never landed. And then one day you just casually wonder out loud where the boat is headed. You've spent every day of your life in the mindset of one on a sailing journey, but when the idea of direction or destination is brought up, it's quickly hushed or dismissed. The boat is a vessel of transportation and yet transportation is kept vague and obscure.

Now, for the first time in your life, the boat is not the world but a part of the world. And you are not a boat-person but a person on a boat. The idea is confusing and incomplete, but could you be a person on an island? You've seen people go overboard before. Some drowned and some were saved, but what if there was another option? You'd seen people on other boats passing by. They did not drown just because they weren't on your boat. The people who waved from land did not die or beg frantically to come aboard your boat for fear of the land they stood on. So you begin to question those who were once on land but now sail with you. They all so prefer the boat that they now talk as if they too had been there all their life, the language and variety of life before fading into a flat, colorless void.

You sail on and on. You are good at it. You know all the ropes and knots and tides and jargon. You don't have the skill or the words to express this disquiet in you. You do your best to keep sailing, though the disquiet grows.

Then one day you wake up and feel so strange. You climb to the deck and it bows and bends before your eyes. You can't find your footing. You hold tight to the mast but lose your balance. Your fellow sailors try to help but they can't understand. You can't possibly describe it, but for the first time in your life, you're seasick. Dizzy and nauseous, you trip and fall off the bow.

The waves take you down. You can almost hear them yelling for you. They throw a line, but the water is too rough. You are pulled too far away. You pump your legs and arms and gasp for the surface.

When it seems like all is lost, you find yourself treading water. Cautiously, warily, you swim back to the rope and let them pull you back up. They celebrate your return by quickly getting you back to work on deck. You're happy for the familiar purpose and the safety, but you can't help but feel a bit used.

When next you see land, you can't help but wonder what it would be like to reach it. Your queasy stomach returns and you can't ever find your balance the same. Passing an island one night, you take a reckless chance and dive into the water. Using your newly learned skill, you swim to the beach. In the shallows, you stand up. You lie on the warm sand and you eat the citrus fruit from the trees and you look, for once, out at your boat from afar. For the first time in your life, you feel truly still.

You return to the boat, but this time they don't throw you a rope. You climb up and try to begin your work again, but when they see the sand left by your feet, your fellow sailors become afraid. Some are offended, others incensed. When asked, they say they aren't acting any differently, but soon they don't talk to you as much as talk at or about you. You do your best to clean up any sand, but they see it where there is none. Soon, you find your cabin has been filled by another. Even your job is taken eventually. You're always welcome on the ship, they say, because where else is there to be.

Years later, in some desert city, you'll find a picture of the ocean and on it some ship sailing, an awful lot like your old one. You'll write a letter perhaps, to put in a bottle someday, and visit the beach when you can. You'll wonder if the sailors ever think of you. You'll rub the old callouses on your hand and turn the page to a picture of a jungle or field, never quite feeling like any one place is the right place.

When you ask those around you where they're headed, sometimes they'll tell you. But even when they don't know the answer, they can understand the question.

Sometimes you wish you'd never come to land or fallen off the boat. Often you wish you'd drowned that day. You never quite forget the sea-shanties. You never quite get the taste of fish out your mouth. You never stop missing the smell. The scars and rope burns never heal all the way.

And even on land, you still sometimes feel seasick.

But some night, without you hardly noticing, you closed your eyes for the first time in a bed and, as you drifted off to sleep, you didn't feel the waves.

Thanks for reading,
Odist