All I ever wanted was to be a mermaid

Wanting to be anyone but myself, being bad at coping, when I realized I wasn’t well

To be something I am not I think is the most natural desire. I watched H20 Just Add Water as a kid and decided the best thing I could ever be was a mermaid. From then every birthday wish was for scales, salt and moonlight.

I got older and decided I'd be a star, a Disney Channel one, so famous I’d have Raven-Symoné cowering in my midst. I got even older and decided I'd be a singer before realizing I can’t sing. Now that I am a writer, sharing the truths of my heart, I want to be every other writer ever. 

I’ve never thought the point in life is to fall in love or make money or something, I think it’s to fade further and further away from whatever snapshot of yourself is pasted in the back of your mind. In my head, I see myself as a fat kid or a finally skinny teen. Their mugshots sway in mind as I jump from one identity to another. Searching for one that makes me forget them entirely. 

I never felt normal. I always had something bubbling beneath my skin, creating oceans between me and every other tragically perfect girl I'd come across. Sometimes it kills me, I think there is no way I'll ever be okay with this. I throw my hands in the air. I’m an aggravated customer, angry at my own service. When will I work myself into something different?

Other times the understanding of my perpetual differentness is a distant fear that I can shake off, like a horror movie I watched years ago. The details become blurry and I can finally sleep through the night. 

Right now I think I occupy some space in between. I am keenly aware I will never be normal. I’m too dark or too big but the truth of it has finally sunk into my bones and it feels something like acceptance. 

I think the worst of this is that I have to get really creative with how I cope. I can’t do drugs, something that continually shocks me. I should, my pain justifies me to, but I can’t (my parents would be so mad), so I do other things. I stare at the ceiling, I don’t workout, I downloaded (deleted then downloaded again) Hinge. I can’t do drugs but watch me get really creative in the other ways I ruin my life. 

Is it sad that I know I am destined for pain? I felt a voice in my head tell me it once. I think the voice was either God or an angel or the version of myself existing 10 years in the future that has somehow managed to bend the space time continuum to urgently get me a message to change the trajectory of my life. Whoever it was, it told me that if I continue like this I will be sad, and it will be only my fault. I think the worst part (there are a lot of worst parts) is that I’m not trying to stop it. Let it come. Let it run me over. 

I got the message from God (or whoever) when I was in the bathroom, meticulously applying my skin care routine (my pain is not bad enough to let myself have bad skin). I brought the towel to my face with a new understanding of myself and my future: this is all going to end really badly. 

I never thought I'd be the kind of person that was sad, then I got a little older. There is this secret to adulthood unknown by children: some people get messed up in a really special way and you just kind of stay like that forever.

When I realized I missed naivete, that was when it became clear I was no longer a child. I was beautifully and perpetually damaged and I have no buffer of adolescence to hide that from me.