I have no attachments, no identifying tribal markers. By that I mean I am no one’s daughter, no one’s wife, no one’s sister, and no one’s mother. Ergo, I am no one, a blank sheet of paper on which many people have felt free to write their stuff.

 

People are so often unaware of their own connectedness, of how much they refer to their attachments for self-identity. They’re usually quite aware that they are not their professional persona (that identity, if not distinguished from themselves, can cause them all sorts of problems.) In other words, they know: I’m not just a doctor, I’m also Alice’s husband and Joey’s dad. But their self-definition usually stops there—though they’re not aware of it—with their connectedness. Outside that connectedness, there is only empty space, dark and unknown, and maybe for some people, a little frightening—threatening, even; for others, an unknown territory they may be tempted to explore.

 

Enter the blank sheet of paper. The most obvious use of that paper is the extra-marital affair. Blank sheets of paper serve as mistresses or lovers (“The Bridges of Madison County”, etc.), but they serve in other ways, too. For example, I learned long ago that I can’t really be close friends with a married woman. What happens, if a woman has been a devoted wife, is that she often sees her single, unattached, friend as the self she is/would have been/might be without her husband. So she wants to write her made-up, fictional self—her “story”—on her blank sheet of paper friend. It might take a while for the friend to figure out what’s going on, but if she’s wise, she’ll keep her distance, for contrary to what’s externally visible (i.e., “blankness”) the single friend does actually have an identity—perhaps very hard won, in a world where identity is determined by relationships—and the friendship is actually, whether the married woman is conscious of what she’s doing or not—an attempt to write a story on her. The married woman doesn’t know she’s doing this to her friend, but there is a part of her she wants to keep for herself, unclaimed by her marriage, and she may feel guilty about that, so she keeps it hidden from herself. It’s not really any different from infidelity, and she’d be horrified if she were aware of it. This is particularly likely to happen if there is any sort of friction or discontent in the marriage—perhaps unacknowledged resentment of the time her husband spends with his own interests, or feeling “taken for granted,” that sort of thing.

 

Blank sheets of paper get caught up in other people’s dramas. They get cast in roles in other people’s plays. And it’s not always easy to figure out what’s going on before sometimes very serious damage is done to that paper! I’ll be frank. Sometimes people scare me—with very good cause. I learned a long time ago that they don’t know what they’re doing when they appoint me the role of witch, seductress—or mother, or mentor, or whatever saint/sinner they need to cast in their drama. They don’t recognize my sovereignty because they don’t perceive their own. They literally don’t know what they’re doing.

 

In the long years of teaching teen-agers and young adults, I caught on fairly quickly, knowing that my students were at that time in their lives when they were searching for who they want to be, who it’s possible for them to be, what childhood fantasies would have to go, and what dreams to pursue—it’s all part of being eighteen or so. Teachers known to be married with families were not “blank” projection screens, like a teacher who’s unmarried, someone who’s not from their town, etc. They could make that teacher anyone they wanted her to be. I’ve been both credited and blamed for decisions, actions, events, I didn’t even know were happening! Most dangerous of all are the “fans.” If you don’t follow their script, their reaction can be horrific, and it’s easy to get the script wrong if you don’t know there is one.

 

Sometimes the experience is funny, sometimes very bitter, and sometimes downright terrifying. I once taught at a small rural school where the faculty (all married women) chose me to hate. Why? I asked to the tobacco-chewing wise old man who was principal. “Simple,” he answered. “You don’t have a husband.” My response was incomprehension—so what! Why’s that a problem? “Oh, that’s not the problem,” he said. “The problem is that they do!” And one learns quickly to understand that “Who does she think she is!?” is a danger signal in code. The question is not Who do I think I am, but Who does she think I am? Once that’s decoded, one is able to cope.

 

Meanwhile, I became ever more content to be alone, and what some people might mistakenly call “independent.” (It isn’t independence at all, however, more like non-dependence, but that’s hard to explain.) I learned that the best-kept secrets are the ones that are told, and the best defense is transparency, not disguise. And I write stories on blank sheets of paper, never on people.