It's so strange when things transition in your life. When things begin to happen around you-some of them being your own doing, some others. All the various little steps and stumbles and forwards and backwards that make you, you. It's so easy to feel like you're lost at sea with clouds overhead and nothing but rain drenched blackness all around you. Your compass barely works and so you try and gain any little bit of ground you can but you just keep getting pushed back-driven back from your destination.
You just want to be home. Feel safe and warm. It's been so long since you've felt that semblance of familiarity with yourself and those people around you that you love. You try to speak but you're left gasping and choking on the wind. The rain burns your eyes and you give up hope. You let the winds drive your ship all around-bashing into rocks, into driftwood and tossed like a toy among the violent waves that just want to drown you.
You set anchor. Your one hope left. At least you won't lose anymore. You cast it off and you watch the chain slowly lurches down from your fingertips and you see flecks of scales that fall from your hands. You watch your anchor begin to disappear, but it's calling for you to follow.You remember.
You've been a fish out of water for so long that you forgot that gills couldn't breathe air. You remember your voice makes no sound through the wind but it slips through the water like long tendrils of seaweed. You forgot you were a fish.
Again.
What the fuck are you doing driving a boat?
I spent so much of my life conforming to other people's ideals that I forgot I had my own. I've been terrified to write because of what it may mean, how it may sound, what other's might think. Come on, Afina! You're starting to look like a fish again, put your legs back on!
No......no.......no...
No.
I'm tired of walking. I want to swim. I want to be wet. I want to navigate my life the way it makes sense and I'm tired of denying I'm a fish just on the off chance someone might say I'm beginning to smell.
::sigh::
I can still hear the voices in my head judging what I do, labeling it all, how I act.....behave. I wish I could slap them with my tail.
Just let me be a fish. Let me be happy. Swimming with my loved ones in the little sea. If a shark comes along and rips up my fins, at least I'm still in the water where I'm happiest. My rocky home. My anchor to keep me there. Never was there a mermaid happier than me.
-Afina
No comments:
Post a Comment