Oceans Listen To Me
It was 2019, and I had come to the conclusion that the feeling of my father in my body was a poison that I had to get rid of. It felt like he was walking my legs, that he was moving my arms, that the voice I had was his, that he pushed the pedals on my bicycle with my legs.
I had come out to myself fully in 2017 and began my transition in 2018. I was on HRT; I had changed my legal name and gender and was living out as fully as I could. So, it was graphically and maniacally sick that I felt like a dead man was living in me — a dead man who never knew who I was.
The need to get rid of this feeling was strong, and I had to find a way to get rid of it but what could I do?
I decided to throw my father into the ocean. If I could discard this ghost attached to me, it would fly away, and I would feel better. The water I chose was the water at the beach at Coney Island. I got on my bicycle, got to the beach, and closed my eyes.
“Ok, Dad, you are dead,” I thought. “It’s time for you to go and be dead somewhere else. Your imposition on my life and how I should live it is wrong and was wrong, and I don’t need or want you anymore.”
I felt relief after that. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was so significant that I never really felt he was controlling me anymore.
2024. I am leaving New York City after 17 years and I wanted to say goodbye this way to some other things I felt I didn’t need. I didn’t know why or what I was going to leave in this ocean this time, but I took the train and sat down on a bench on the pier not far from the place I had visited in 2018.
“I want to leave things here,” I thought, “but I can’t just discard them. The pain that I felt from not being able to transition for much of my life, I feel that, and embrace it, and leave it here. The pain I feel from that transition, I feel that, embrace it, and leave it. The pain of being autistic without assistance all my life, I feel, embrace, leave. The pain of not knowing how to be a queer woman, I feel, embrace, leave. The pain of making mistakes, of leaving friends, of not being perfect, of failing, of being alone — I feel, embrace, leave.”
I cried quite a bit doing this. I felt more than sadness or regret. I shed things I can’t identify. I left things behind I will forget.
Doing this helped me. Something shifted. It felt like I had been heard — like the ocean had patience, could listen. It felt like the ocean had opened up a space for me.
But how could the ocean hear me? What looks solid — the ocean — is actively impermanent — molecules flowing. What I went to in 2019 was decidedly not the same as what I went to in 2024, and whatever I called it wasn’t what it was.
Still, it felt like it had listened. Talking to the ocean felt like talking to a person. I felt like I had been heard.
But maybe what I really did in that moment is listen to myself. That by sitting there and using the ocean as an image I was providing for myself a forum for hearing what I felt most deeply needed to be heard. That I needed to hear me, to embrace me, to let things go for me on my behalf, but I needed the ocean to do that.
Why did I need the ocean though?
Maybe it’s too bold a conclusion, but it occurred to me I needed the ocean for the same reason other people need God. We feel we need help from things out there. Somehow, we don’t feel heard until something else hears us. God or the ocean or magnificent beings of all kinds — these things allow us to feel heard in a way we need.
But really, it isn’t God or the ocean that hears us or that we get close to, it is ourselves we hear and get close to.
My Buddhist teacher, Robina Courtin, mentions often that we are obsessed with other people hearing what we have to say. She wonders why it is we are not satisfied with ourselves. But I don’t know how to be satisfied with myself. I don’t have a method for doing it. Perhaps I need the ocean to learn. Maybe when I finally settle down alone with only God or the ocean or whatever, I am finally alone enough to hear me even if I’m not calling it me.
