Mermaids

A few months back I had a close friend say I reminded her of a mermaid. The comment has stuck with me in a way that has been haunting my dreams and waking reflection.

I have often, let's be honest here, my whole life, felt out of water. I have felt like an alien on a strange planet. I don't understand people. I don't understand the way they think, act, or do the things the so many call "normal". None of it makes sense to me immediately, so I observe.

Like a mermaid, I sometimes long to have legs and walk with them, like a normal person. Sometimes I have a deep longing for the ocean, to find more people like me that "swim".  Caught on dry land with fins and gills.

Growing up I dealt with everyone thinking I was a freak. I was a prodigy, a writer/poet, that instinctively knew how to turn a phrase and make an artful metaphor.

Now, understand that I am not really saying I am a mermaid. It is a metaphor. I have to state this disclosure because in the past I have been accused of being crazy for using metaphors or story telling.

But what I am saying, is that life is hard. Maybe it is harder for quirky people with poor social skills? I don't know. What I do know it that it is really hard to thrive out of water. It took time, growing up some.

I recently read an article about child prodigies and how as adults they fade and flop and struggle. The article, to sum it up, says that they are all intuition and that early success comes so easy to them that they never learn to actually master the craft or work to improve. I could not find the article but this one says similar things.

Yes. That. I flowed through writing classes and to this day I still don't know how many syllables in a haiku- I have to look it up. I have no idea what kind of verse Shakespeare used. I graduated with a degree in creative writing and published poetry and I should know these things! I should have studied them, paid attention, mastered the craft. Instead, I just walked away from it.

So now, I feel like I am drowning. I feel like I am not very good at any of it. I feel like Garth Brooks- a country music super star who's passion was really rock and roll. I'm good at making pork and farming- but that's not really what I want to be good at. That's not what I want to do. I am paddling upstream in murky alligator snapping turtle infested muck, my own insecurities and incompetence like a bag of cannon balls weighted and tied to my legs.

I have to make peace with that. For right now, I have to make this swamp and mire my home. I have to make friends with those beasts in the river, my tail, and either drown or emerge queen of the swamp.