Drifting is all I've ever known. We wade in the water from raft to raft. My parents and my parent's parents were drifters. Just as the sun is so warm and inviting, the rain is refreshing and cool. The storms can be really hard to handle, but I was born into a good family who really bands together. Some families let their members drift away from the group and they get lost in the waves. But not my family. We link arms and close our eyes tight. My mom always said that our love of each other and our goodness towards others is what keeps us safe. That's all we need to do: keep drifting, share our food and resources with nearby drifters, and stay together. We will all survive if we stay on track. This is the only life I've ever known. The sea provides our food. There are dangers in the sea, but most of them we can be prepared to handle.
Drifting never bothered me until recently, and was actually quite traumatizing now that I'm telling you. Two friends, Aaron and Rachel, gone in the matter of a week. Aaron, sweet Aaron, just let go. He said that drifting was meaningless, that he didn't matter, and said it was better for everyone if he just let go. He struggled and sank below where we could reach him. And me, left, to do what? How do I even process this? How could he think this was better for everyone? I may never understand.
Maybe he did do the right thing, but Rachel? What is her excuse? She got caught up in the spell of this one Seeker. Seekers are so different from us and not widely welcomed in our communities. They live out of the water on this huge raft that they call a boat. It mostly stays away from our pack of drifters. Sometimes a strong current or bad storm would drift us closer together. Most of them looked over their boat and laughed at us or gave us dirty looks. One day, the cutest little boy dropped a toy in the water. I swam over to return it, but the way his parents looked at me clearly communicated that I was not welcome. Maybe I didn't look like them, or talk like them, but I am a good person. I didn't understand why she acted that way. We were different, but I didn't think that was a problem.
Sometimes Seekers would shout from the boat telling us to come join them. They would shout that it's better than the water. How could they possibly know what the water is like? They live on that boat. When storms would come, they hid in the boat or got worried that their precious toys would flow overboard. Really, most of the time they worried. Worried that their children would become drifters, worried that the boat would sink, worried that they wouldn't have enough stuff when they already had more stuff than any of us. Why would we want to get on the boat with a bunch of unhappy worriers? They never even tried to get to know us, they just wanted us to get on their boat. Did we have to be just like them for us to be friends? Our pack called them crazy, and I wasn't sure that they produced evidence to prove otherwise.
The Seeker that visited Rachel was so different. She was very pretty, and friendly, and our same age. I thought I was happy until I met her. She had a strange light about her. I wonder if it was because she was in a little boat away from the big boat of crazy, unhappy worriers. She used large sticks and rowed through the packs of drifters until she got to Rachel's pack. Rachel stopped her to ask her about her boat and what she was doing. After their conversation, Rachel swam to our pack and told me all about her. Her name was Hope and she grew up on the boat. Rachel was so interested about every detail of what the boat was like. Hope would visit Rachel often to talk to her, sometimes every day. She would sometimes bring Rachel gifts that to my delight would be shared with me after Hope left. I heard so many stories from Rachel about Hope and what it was like growing up on the boat.
Eventually, Rachel came to me and told me that we had to go on the boat. She tried to convince me that it was better than in the water. But how could she just leave her parents like that? How could she leave her little brother? Angry, I fought with her that she didn't have to go on the boat to be friends with Hope or to start living her life to be more like Hope if that is what she wanted. Rachel said it was the only way, and she left. She climbed on the small boat and was immediately given new clothes and was starting to dry off as she rowed away. I waved and cried, but it grew so quiet so quickly.
I haven't spoken to my parents much about how I feel because I know what they will say. They will call me ungrateful and ask, "what have the Seekers ever done for us?" I don't know the answer to that question. The Seekers were always were so far off until Hope met Rachel. I saw what it did to Rachel's parents and brother. They are barely hanging on to their raft. And now they have no one to take care of them when they get old. I don't want to leave my parents like that. Going on the boat was not an act of love. It was an act of abandonment. One, that I wanted no part in.
