Murmurs of a Mermaid *Guest Blogger*

I have the privilege of introducing a guest blogger - another mermaid, who has woven beautiful heartfelt words to embrace your weary hearts. Her piece is called 'Changing Tides' and is a homily to water written through her own experiences. She charts a personal transition in her life, and like all water women, is able to reflect upon those hardships through the metaphor of sea water.

This is a real treat and I think a feature I would like to continue, if you wish to write anonymously (or named) then please get in touch with the heading 'Murmurs of a Mermaid,' about anything that inspires you so we can all share collectively. Mahalo.  

So without further ado....

"Changing of the tides"

I made a decision seventeen days ago. I decided I wanted to go out into the world again. I wanted to feel, to experience, to risk almost everything, to be afraid and to do it anyway. I wanted change, I needed a new horizon.

I sit here, seventeen days later. I have one less relationship in my life. A relationship that brought me huge amounts of comfort, of solace, of stability and of serenity.
But it brought me no risk. No action. No challenge to my way of being in the world. No change in the greater sense.

I was at a point in my life – five and a half years into a relationship, three years out of University, eighteen months into personal psychotherapy – where I was cresting. I spent days and nights in constant tension – uncomfortable, not knowing what it was exactly, but knowing something had to give.

When it happened, it was a sudden, surreal rush. It wasn't that I knew what was going to happen, or how it would work, but I was plunging onward. I was surrendering to the inner wave of emotion that has been within me for a very long time.

I have always felt that I have a lot of pain. I find things that soothe that pain – guitar playing, watching the sea, writing, singing, knitting, (surfing sometimes!) – repetitive, creative, beautiful, safe things. They soothe the pain and the rage inside me, the things I have bottled and labelled and neatly stowed away beneath the surface.

I have been revisiting those jars lately, and systematically and calmly smashing them to pieces. And, because of all the glass flying around, and my fear that it would get someone hurt, that I decided I needed some time and space on my own to really work things out.

I don’t want to be an apothecary of still, stagnant liquids. I want to be a fluid, moving ocean of feeling and living and dreaming.

So I am moving with my internal momentum. To pastures new. To other waves. To clearer waters, hopefully.

I am inspired and awed by the openness, sweetness and creativity of my dear friend Sophia. I read her blog (as you are now) with delight at her joy and trepidation and sympathy for her struggles. She is one of the great people who is an open book – she lets the world impact her, embraces the experience, feels everything and then lives through it and moves on to the next adventure. I aspire to be like that. We can all learn a lot from Soph.

- Written by a Mermaid.