Loving the Mermaid

I have recently recalled a short-story I once read: "The Song of the Mermaid". A group of people have sailed out on a lake on a quiet summer evening. Every one is enchanted by the feeling, the sounds and the colours of this beautiful evening and lost in dreams. The calmness is interrupted by a strange tune to which they can see no source. Slowly the fear creeps up on them one by one and they hurry back to shore. It turns out that the sound was produced by a man sitting in the boat who now laughs at their folly. Even though he convinces them of the natural explanation to the music, they all feel strange and have a vague image of a singing mermaid lingering in their minds.


A while ago a person entered my life. I didn't mean for him to enter, and especially not for him to have the impact he had. Maybe he meant to enter. I am not sure. I do know he was looking for something, but I doubt if his morals would have let him look for what he found.

It started out as casual chat about food, the weather, pets; but something led us fast to more profound subjects; marriage, the meaning of life and love, religion, existentialism. To great surprise for both of us we found that not only did we seem to have a whole world of ideas in common - we also quickly trusted and liked each other. Chat let to messenger, let to Facebook and before I ever got the chance to stop and think, we were writing each other hundreds of words every day; confiding like never before.


I excused myself with finding it tricky to meet a new male friend. The way my stomach turned, the way I thought about not much else than him; it couldn't be love, it couldn't mean that I was cheating on my fiance.

I was astounded by his almost brutal level of honesty. He would tell me his deepest, darkest secrets. Slowly I began to give some secrets back. Letting down masks that I had kept up for ages. For the first time, I uttered the words that maybe I wasn't really happy in my relationship. He listened to it all, gave me feedback. I listened and tried to comprehend his horrible life story revealed mail by mail.

I fell in love. He seemed perfect to me; even his flaws were perfect.

He was accepted. He needed that. He fell in love because I accepted him and his story and did not judge.

I may have accepted. But I did not listen. I did not hear or understand the truth behind having been diagnosed with borderline. I couldn't really fit this condition in with the perfect man I spent hours talking to. I could not comprehend how he could be in love yet know that he had no desire to ever meet the object of this love.
I would be upset by the thought that I was only an illusion; that this kind of love was nothing but an illusion; that I would never be as perfect in real life as I was with him.
I was seduced by the chance to be perfect. Even though I wrote him of the deepest darkest corners of my soul, I felt next to perfect. Even though my depression was slowly breaking through, I felt more complete and alive than ever before.

Though his mails were real, I read what I wanted to read. That is all any of us can do. We can never read what the other person wants us to read. I created a beautiful tune on a string stretched too far, combined with magical evening breezes.
This imaginary song told me of his growing self confidence; that he would no longer accept to be abused by the people closest to him: he would break free and stand strong on his own. I must admit that this last sentence goes on: and one day, we would meet and every thing would be perfect.

But mermaids are illusions. Strength can fail, relationships are rarely black and white: maybe his wife treats him badly, but there are reasons for this behavior. People may create strong visions of their future life, but they can also turn their backs on these visions and choose that the less perfect life is actually suitable for them.
I openly admit I fell in love with a mermaid. The one with the most beautiful song I have ever heard. For a while I experienced the dangers of a mermaid's song very vividly. I lost all sense of my life, my obligations and other hopes and dreams. All that mattered was reaching the mermaid.

Fortunately the mermaid had too high moral standards to lead me all the way out to sea, so that there would be no turning back.
Now I just have to learn to live with the memory of this: that lingering strange feeling that also touched the characters of the short story, knowing that I will never be the same, and still having to own up to my actions and choices and know that I reacted so strongly to a mere figment of my imagination - because every grown up knows that mermaids aren't real.

A True Rant on Freedom and Belonging

I wish I were alone.

I wish I could be happy in my relationship.

Recently the urge to go off on my own has grown stronger. After a couple of years being one half of a couple, I feel like testing my independence once again. It is complex, however. How do one tell one's better half: "I am going to apply for a job in China, can we please set our life on pause for six months"?

If it were him throwing this thought to me, I would probably scream, cry, ask why, doubt his love for me. Eventually he would stay at home or I would break up with him. I think. On the other hand I might reluctantly support him in his venture and wait for him to come back.

How can I be 32 and still want to explore the world?

The culture, I was born into, pretty much dictates that by now I should be going crazy to have a baby. However, recently I am thinking that this pressure to feel a certain way, might be what is driving me crazy. Maybe some of us are born without that maternal instinct or biological clock that seems to tick so frantically away in most women from the age of 20.

I have taken an education specializing in educating children, I should be dying to have my own and educate them. I should be happy that I have a lovely man in my life that isn't going anywhere whether I fly around the world or lie on the couch for a month. All he wants is my love and the occasional chance to a grab at my butt. I really should be happy. So now I am beating myself up for not being happy, for not wanting the small-town, steady job, family life.

Last summer he proposed to me. I said yes. By now, the plans of an actual wedding are very remote. I have a valid excuse: the depression diagnosis, but I really doubt if that is the reason. Long before it all went really bad, just thinking about that wedding was stressing me out; I didn't know what I wanted. There are so many options and I couldn't really feel which dreams were actually mine and which were the creation of weddings seen on TV, my mother's dream for my wedding and weddings as they appear to my friends and family.

I'd like to be free, but still belong somewhere, to someone. I wonder why we all want that: to belong. Why is it that it seems so hard for us to truly embrace the postmodern way of life and be free, move around the world to our liking and let relations to others be what they are; fleeting connections that come and go in accordance to our own needs and the needs of others; much like our jobs.

It is today a rarity that people stay in the same job for their entire adult life. A sociologist by the name of Zygmunt Baumann says that we are all likely to have approximately 11 different jobs throughout the working years of our lives. We get a new job when the old one doesn't hold the prospect for development anymore or the needs of our workplace has shifted in a way that we no longer wish to fill these needs. This is becoming more and more OK, though some people, at least where I come from, still stick to the work-ethics of the industrial society; to get a job and keep it by doing what is asked of you, but not much more than that.

Another sociologist talks of what signifies our way of living today as "ideological incoherence in time". For instance we try to keep up the ideals of partnership all the way back from an agri-cultural society-form; at this time marriage was for life. They had good reason for it back then; the marriage was not as much a question of love as of financial security and social acceptance. Today, the financial security matter is pretty much non-existent. Most of us can take care of ourselves if we want to.

On the other hand, there might be a thing about the social acceptance. I think singles everywhere will recognize being haunted with the relentless questions about your love-life from friends and family. We might not want to be affected by this, but I think most singles are subconsciously affected; they know that what the people closest to them want most of all from them, is that they will go out and find that significant other and thereby gain the social acceptance symbolized by a halt in the relentless questions.

For my own part, this social acceptance also plays a big part. People relate a lot better to me buying furniture with the man and nesting, preparing for a baby-boom (doom?), than for me getting all worked up about going to China or discussing existentialism.

I guess there is no real chance of changing this ideological incoherence of our time. So in the best existentialistic way, I guess the choice is up to me: Do I want to fly off and see the world and leave the adorable, but quite boring hubby-to-be, behind? Or do I want to fold my wings, give hubby a hug, pat the dog and embrace the life in social acceptance and the feeling of belonging?