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 ^{(it's beta!)}

I have always known I never belonged here on the surface. Ever since I was born I have been different. I always seemed to be crying unless I was in the water. My mother had a hard time breast feeding. She told me later when I had asked her what I was like as a baby. I was swimming in my toddler pool before I could walk and holding my breath underwater before I could talk.

‘It’s just a faze.’ Friends, relatives and doctors would insist.

‘She’s an Aquarian! What do you expect?’ cried my aunt Maybel.

But I knew better.

I remember the first time we visited the beach. As soon as I smelled the salt air through the car windows it was as if I had been blind, deaf and dumb and all of a sudden been given all my senses back. This was where I belonged, I decided. The feeling of sand between my feet was pure heaven. But oh, the waves! They hugged me like a long lost child and I felt they were my best friends, the only ones who had ever understood me. I didn’t leave the water all day and when my parents called that it was time to go I panicked. They screamed at me as I hid beneath the waves, refusing to listen. They sent my oldest brother out after me and he dragged me back to shore, kicking and screaming. I flew into paroxysms of fury, throwing my first tantrum and shocking my parents out of their anger. I was usually quiet, always doing what I was told, but I raged, screamed and kicked until I had to be dragged into the car and threatened with a ‘we will never come back here again if this is the way you behave.’ I refused to talk to my brother or parents for weeks after that.

I began having dreams of the ocean. In these dreams I lived under the water and never had to come up for air. My hair was long, green and wispy instead of my usual black and floated around me like a halo in the water. I found I had a tail instead of legs and was fascinated as each scale gleamed like a fish’s. After confiding these dreams to one of my sisters she laughed and said I must be a mermaid. I listened, enthralled, as she told me all about them. I was horrified when she told me they were just fairytales.

Being the youngest child of seven my strange behavior went unnoticed for quite some time. But there was only so long my parents could hold onto the ‘just a faze’ excuse. By the time I had reached year six it was wearing thin. Although I think it was really the careers day at school that did it. When we were asked to write on ‘what we wanted to be when we grew up’ I was thrilled. I wrote pages and pages on mermaids and how my dream job would be to live under the sea. After reading it out to the class my teacher laughed and said I had a very good imagination, though that wasn’t quite what she had meant. I insisted that it was really what I wanted to be so fervently that in the end she was quite disturbed and made a big fuss of sending me to the counselor and the principal. My parents were called in and told about the whole thing while I was being assessed. My extremely worried and slightly embarrassed parents took me to a special hospital, they called it. A funny man who smelled so much like the beach it was distracting asked me more questions. I tried to answer as best I could but the beach smell was getting in the way. I apologised to the doctor and he seemed concerned when I explained what was wrong. He excused himself and went into the room where my parents were waiting. I remember noticing how he left the door fractionally open by mistake. It was then that I realised that it hadn’t been the doctor who smelled like the ocean at all. His window was also open and I had smelled the salty air wafting through it. I could just hear the pounding of the waves on the beach over the doctor talking to my parents. The words ‘delusional’, ‘possible mental illness’ and ‘professional care’ were being thrown about. I had been shocked, they thought I was crazy!

I escaped. My clothes had dragged me down as I ran and my bare feet (when did my shoes fall off?) were cut on the dirt road. But still I remember running. The smell had been so strong everywhere, burning my nose, in my head, my chest. So strong I could taste it, almost reach out and grasp it. I found and followed a sandy path as it had wound its way toward home. When I finally reached it I cried out in sheer relief. New energy filled me as I dashed toward the ocean. I had been so excited, swimming out as far as I could. It wasn’t long before a rip caught me, dragging me along. I had been surprised at the roughness of my friend. Now I was glad for the roughness, the quick end. As I lay here remembering, waiting for it to be over, I wonder if I could have ended this differently. If there was another path I could have taken. But I realise that I never had a choice, there was nothing I could have done. This was the only way it was ever going to end. The only way I could ever really be happy. To live eternally under the ocean, dead or alive.