Sometimes I feel alone, drowning in a sea of disgust. I swim and flail and float and search for the mythical island of peace, and yet, I just seem to fall deeper into the violent whirling waves of pain, and rejection, and fear, and hatred.

I look out around me, and I stare at the brilliant, sparkling waters, and feel the fish bumping against my feet. They pass me by, school after school, fish after fish. They ignore the pain of those around them, simply worried over which grades they need to achieve, what shirt they have to buy this weekend, who asked what friend to which dance. I stare down at their flashy scales in sick awe wondering; “Why don’t I look like that?”

I stare at the dolphins as they laugh and jump, swimming through the waves with a sleek grace. The dolphins capture everybody’s attention. I think about the clown fish, with their jokes and laughter, and constant charisma. I wonder if I could be like the lyon fish, with their gorgeous stripes and outrageous style. I stare at my arms and silently scream over the injustice of it all, because while they have schools to swim in, I am alone. Where they have fins, I have lengthy limbs. Where they have a simple tail, I have a long one, with dull scales and thin webbing. Where they have patterned scales with designs and beauty, mine are simple, in a shade of green far too similar to the very seaweed I swim through. Where they are majestic, I am but a black shadow on the canvas of their beauty.

I try to be striking, to be worth the title “pretty,” but I simply get laughter at my pitiful attempts at perfection.

When they’re bubbles of laughter ring in my head, pounding against the walls of my skull, my heart would sink like a ship in a storm.
When their comments on my pasty skin, my sickly hair, my watery blue eyes, my everything got to be too much, I would cry salty tears of the sea I swam in. And when I could no longer think because a dull numbness had settled over my body; when I could no longer see because I had fallen deep into the filthy sand at the bottom of the ocean I struggled to swim in…then I would dig. I would search with desperate hands, sifting through the ugly sand, straining with shaking fingers to find the one thing that would wake me up again.

Tears would leak from my eyes as I held the sharpest shell of the sea in my palms. I would glare at the hated tool, because I shouldn’t need it to dispel this numbness. I shouldn’t need it to feel. But I do. So I would drag the edge of that shell across the pale, delicate skin of my thin wrists, and sigh as pain flowed through my nerves. I would watch my blood pour into the water, and scream because it painted my world the crimson color of everything I hated. Pain and fear and depression and hate for a body that wasn’t perfect!

Eventually my world would be just the right color of red; just enough to make sure I felt for a few more days. So I would kick out of the depths of the sea and swim to the surface, where I would struggle to survive once more.

Because while there are lots of fish in the sea, there are only a few mermaids sprinkled here and there, alone and lost, searching for their island of peace.