Love Begins Where Fairy Tales End
What is love all about, anyway?
When I was a mermaid and he was a handsome prince, I fell in love.
I fell in love with a man I barely knew. I fell in love because I was looking for freedom for just one night. I fell in love like I was looking for a way out of my life. I fell in love like a girl who thought she was a mermaid.
I was drowning in my own grief, but I thought I was breathing water.
I was drowning in the mucus inside my own infected lungs, but I called it normal.
My life was so full of water. I’ve always called myself a waterbaby, but what I meant was that all I’ve ever wanted was to get away. When you’re chronically ill, your body is your life sentence. When you’re chronically in pain, your body is a prison cell.
When your mind is so full of trauma you’ve built idols to the ghosts inside the overflowing attic of your own head, you wear a straitjacket only you can see.
I was crazy, and dying, and deserving of death as punishment for all of my imaginary crimes. So I was told by the people who claimed to love me most. So I came to believe.
When I was a mermaid and he was a handsome prince, we didn’t understand each other at all. I spoke like a girl and he spoke like a guy and never…
