R.S. Rain's Blog

Cover Update for Volume One

Between the Lines There Lies a Story of Me

Between the Lines There Lies a Story of Me will be getting a new cover update!

Why this change?

Personally I feel like there could be a better representation of the book by its cover. I wasn’t really satisfied with the current cover.

At the time of publishing, I didn’t realized I could have gone with other options as I was too preoccupied with the publishing and manuscript.

I don’t regret this choice as it’s going to be even better!

Are you looking forward to the upcoming change?

History and Break down for “A Hole Through the Perfect Heart (Mind)

R.S. Rain

This was one of the poems where Rain wrote something different. The poem is experiential, in some ways. To understand the enormity or ‘big deal’ of this poem, we have to dive into how it began and the beginning of Rain’s poetry writing. Rain had always opted to write free verse poems as it was her favorite kind. Later, she introduced an enormous variety of figurative language in her free verse.

In Middle School, when she was introduced to poetry, she noticed that rhyming poems were more popular and common. She happened to come across a book, to her utter surprise, that was entirely written in verse. After reading the book, poetry was all her heart and mind knew. Even after attempting to write several stories, they all came out as poetry. That was when she backed away from writing stories.

Despite her shift towards writing poetry, she could not write a rhyming poem spontaneously. She found the rhyming structure difficult and very limiting, so she gave up on it altogether and decided to write according to her own preferences. From that point on, she refused to search for other poets, and she did not write sonnets or diamante, or other forms that might imitate other writers’ styles. Wanting to just write using her own style, Rain avoided diving into the poems that were written throughout history or are famous (as she felt like there was too much pressure to be like a certain poet or to use their style.)

Fast forward to her junior year in High School. At the end of the school year, the last week, I believe, Rain was in her Speech room just chilling, and since she cannot spend too much time without doing anything, she began to dabble on a folder. After doodling some flowers and hearts, the first two lines of a poem just came to her. It was time for her Creative Writing class. The late bell rang, and everyone was in their seats, they did not have any work to be done. It was basically a free period since their grade was already submitted for their report cards and the teacher said they could do whatever they wanted. Not surprising, the entire class started talking with one another or with the teacher talking about summer etc.

Meanwhile, Rain just sat there, bored out of her mind. She did not have a classmate to talk to, since she was a bit of a loner, and was a little bothered by the lack of work. She then looked at the lines on the folder on her desk and begin transferring the lines to a loose-leaf paper. The teacher did inquire at the time what she was doing, since she was the only one writing, and Rain said she was writing a poem.

Rain remembers thinking, it would be cool to rewrite the first few lines of every sentence in the first verse, using repetition to write the second verse. Also, as she wrote the poem, it rhymed. Surprisingly, it was not exceedingly difficult to rhyme because that was how the poem flowed (how it was meant to be).
It was so natural that there was she was not worried about finding the perfect rhyming word to create a flow. It is worth mentioning, at the end of class, she did show the poem to her teacher, informing him she just wrote it. She asked him to read it and got a satisfying surprised look from the teacher. She will always remember his response, “Wow, that’s awesome.”.

But wait. There is more. For Rain, the message behind this poem changed course after a few years. For better or worse, the poem went through a makeover, or, to be more precise, an enhancement. In the original version, Rain did not use the first person POV. Just like with THD, Rain had the feeling that this wasn’t enough, that there was more to be said. After rereading the poem many times, she contemplated whether to make it longer/continue the poem or not. But after staring at the poem for a while it hit her. Rain loves the idea of two different voices/speakers in her poems, a technique which she used in a few of the poems in this anthology.

Subject and Speaker of the Poem

While the poem is written using two different voices or from two different perspectives, the subject of the poem is an individual who is coping with mental illness brought on by the things that are haunting her, as well as the inability to . These things seem to lead into depression. As the poem progresses, the speaker indicates the challenges of her journey, as the two different speakers, the heart and the mind, express different perspectives on her journey. In the end, part of the mind must be sacrificed.

Poetic Techniques

Rain uses a variety of poetic techniques in the poem. She uses alliteration throughout as a sound effect to create the musicality of poetry. Rain also repeats line, which not only adds to the poetic effect, but is reflected in the meaning and themes of the poem, particularly the theme of the circularity of life. She also incorporates allusions which help to contribute to the meaning of the poem. Additionally, Rain uses metaphor throughout the poem to support the themes and meanings within the poem.

Summary of the Poem

“A Hole Through the Perfect Heart (Mind)” begins in the third-person point of view, describing the beauty that is hidden within and longs to be heard and, in a sense, to come to life. This beauty is in the darkness, and thus, no one can see it. The first stanza also introduces the idea of the mask that seems to also hide the truth from the outside world.

The second stanza introduces the second voice, in the poem, identified by both the shift into a first-person point of view and the use of italics. This voice is darker, indicating concerns that people who used to call themselves friends are laughing behind her back. This laughter haunts her. She also echoes the image of the “mask” used by the first speaker, but this one is a “killer’s mask.” Despite her desire to remove the mask, she is unable to, indicating that there is a safe switch that is stopping her. She also wishes that the friends’ whispers about her would stop. In this stanza, she alludes to the growth of a plant, which harkens back to her reference to the tree of knowledge which has taken root. Her desire is to take control of her own growth, to “be the water of [her] plant.” She hopes to allow it to grow based on its own natural inclinations.

In the third stanza, she returns to the voice from the first stanza, referring back to the idea of beauty, but instead commenting on the relationship between beauty and danger. In this stanza, beauty also has the ability to deceive and has power. The image of the mask recurs in this stanza as well, this time creating a “fake smile”and it acts as a way to hide any darkness that is inside the speaker; it also has the ability to mold itself, creating a method of separating the interior from the outside world. This stanza also mentions a deal with a demon, which seems to allude to a faustian bargain, a deal where one is willing to sacrifice anything to attain knowledge or power.

As the next stanza begins and the second speaker returns, she indicates a paradox. In this case, she is indicating that she is an “unbroken shard of glass.” The paradox seems to point out that there is only a piece of her left, and there is much going on that can’t be seen because it lingers beneath the surface, although the pain is so intense, that it is starting to show on the surface. She also indicates that she doesn’t want to be so fragile, a line that connects the reader back to the glass image at the beginning of the stanza.

With the return of the original speaker, she indicates that she is searching for salvation, an “angel,” but also indicates that the darkness seems to grow, and she seems to be transforming. The crows that she mentions are often portents of death and seem to be foreshadowing what will happen as the poem progresses.

The shame of the first-person speaker continues, as does her sense of helplessness and loss of control. Once the third-person speaker resumes, her stanza repeats the idea of searching, but also indicates the possibility of strength within, despite the darkness. Her reference to a queen seems to indicate a sort of royalty, and her reference to armies, indicates the strength to fight. However, there is a sense of anticipation that apologies would destroy the “monster not wanted.”
Despite that moment of hope, the return of the first-person voice brings a return of desperation as well. The speaker becomes the “apple” that has been “turned into juice,” a metaphor that indicates that damage cannot be undone. Continuing the apple metaphor, she struggles with the purpose of eating an apple, when a pill will provide nutrition just as well. However, the pill won’t satisfy the hunger she is experiencing, and so she desires a return to wholeness.

That desire for wholeness continues into the third-person stanza, where the speaker creates a metaphor of being a forest, which connects back to the earlier references to growing as well as to haunting, although by this point in the poem, the haunting happens with a thought of whether anyone is special. She also strives to take control through music and dancing.
With that, in the next first-person stanza, the first-person voice indicates a desire to not disappear as well as a desire to live “a straight line,” a desire, for life to proceed in an organized fashion, rather than moving in circles, which would indicate little to no forward progression, as also shown in her repetition of the word “round”.

The desire to be strong and remain steady persists in the next stanza, relying on imagination, music, and dancing to retain her balance. She also expresses concern about the black hole that threatens to consume her, creating a metaphor for herself as a “galaxy of earth.” The metaphor continues, referring to the stargazer and peace.

The final stanza for the third-person voice, continues the quest to get rid of the despair and to live a life that follows a straight line, as she descends into “the disease that cannot be cured.” As the leaves, which should be light fall, they have more force than she can withstand, but the end of the section seems to indicate a rebirth that will hopefully allow the beauty that has been hidden to be revealed.

The final two stanzas for the first-person voice indicate a sense of letting go, releasing the self from the reality it has lived with. The voice indicates a sense of the inherent possibilities of releasing a part of the mind.

Themes and Message

This poem is a coming of age poem in which the speaker must learn to cope with the challenges of growing up. Part of that coping requires accepting who she is as well as accepting what she has gone through in life, in particular the judgment of others as something that has shaped her. One of those challenges that she has faced is the challenge of being haunted by those who have tormented her in some way, in part because they cannot see the beauty that is inside her. Additionally; she must struggle with her own silence as she finds ways to cope. Her most significant coping methods are music and dance, two things that are repeated to emphasize their importance. She struggles against depression that arises from the challenges of growing up. In the end, sometimes part of the self must be sacrificed in order to grow.

In the end, she must not only survive despite the pain and the things that are haunting her, but grow, as indicated by the plant metaphors throughout, and not allow herself to be consumed. She must also accept the circularity of life, even while she longs to progress in a straight line. In the end, she desires that movement forward, rather than just spinning in circles and going nowhere.

Did you Know? A Breakdown of "The Mermaid With a Bruised Tail"

R.S. Rain

“The Mermaid With a Bruised Tail” is about control, abuse, and survival. This poem is told from two perspectives, that of a “mermaid”, an innocent and inexperienced woman from another culture, and that of the man who captures her, controls her, and abuses her. The “mermaid” is beautiful and rare, but she is also prized by the man because she is happy. He wants to possess that happiness in her because he does not have any of his own. Under his control, however, she loses her happiness. The “mermaid” fights for freedom from this abusive relationship and against her own doubts and judgments from him, and within herself. In the end, the “mermaid” knows that she is not at fault for getting into the relationship in the first place, and comes to understand that the man is a predator, but believes that she can’t leave because the “key” to escape is within his control. The man mocks her and says that she is unaware that the “key” was actually within her all along.

The poem begins and ends with the man’s perspective, emphasizing the man’s control over the situation and over the “mermaid” herself. This poem uses perspective shifts and repetition to express its themes of control, abuse, and survival. The stanzas get shorter and shorter as the poem goes on to show how small the man makes the “mermaid” feel over time, how hesitant and broken she is, and how final the situation has become.

The first stanza is a long stanza of 19 lines coming from the man’s perspective. He tells of his desire to capture and control the beautiful “mermaid” in one long stanza. This device shows how intense his feelings are, as he could not even stop to take a breath while speaking of his need for her. The word “My” or “Mine” is used in this stanza 10 times. This shows that he is not interested in the “mermaid” for her sake, but is selfish in his desire, and only wants to own and possess her rather than love her as an equal. The word “swim” is used twice to describe her movement in her autonomous world, and then her possible movement away from him. We will see throughout the poem that they both only use the word “swim” when they are looking back on the time when she was free. He says, “I knew then that she was mine” and then later in the stanza “I knew she had to be mine.” This reiteration of the same idea shows how important it is to him and how obsessively he is thinking about possessing her. He says, “I had to capture her/Capture her secretly”. This repetition shows the thought that he puts into how he is going to capture her, and the wily way in which he goes about it, so that she thinks that she did it to herself. He is a predator from the outset, stalking his prey. There is intent here to control her and treat her like an object from the very beginning. Here we see the first mentions of her smile as a “ray”, and her eyes as “glistening”. This is the “mermaid’s” maiden state. These are some of the reasons he loves her, but also, as we will see later is the poem, some of the dear qualities that she will lose in captivity. The man says everything he has to say for the moment in one go showing his confidence and intensity.

Now we get a 5-line and a 7-line stanza from the “mermaid’s” perspective. The 5-line stanza focuses on time, reiterated here twice, as broken, and as missing. This is showing how long she feels she has been in captivity. It seems like forever. She is confused. Here we see the first mention of the “cage” she feels she is trapped in, speaking about it as a cage of her fantasy, a cage of her own making. Although we know that the man intended to capture her, she believes that she has done this to herself. Here we see the first mention of “reality”. This is an interesting concept that plays out later in the poem, as the mermaid is a mythological character, and here she does not recognize herself in the real world anymore. She is becoming disassociated with herself. She is losing the bits of herself that made her magical. We are not sure in this moment whether she is actually a mermaid or if she just uses the mermaid as a metaphor for her understanding of her transcendent qualities, for the rare and special soul that she possesses. Regardless, she is vacillating between being a “mermaid” and being a “human” here, losing some of the more magical parts of herself and becoming confused as to who she really is. She also is a “mermaid” because she is from the “ocean”, her homeland. She is trying to decide which world she belongs in, whether she is still the girl that she was in her home, or if she is now a “human”, a person who lives and thrives in her new location. Later she decides that she is in fact a mermaid, and therefore that she does still identify herself as a person from her native land. She does not belong here.

In the 7-line stanza from the “mermaid’s” perspective, we see her speak of herself in the first person for the first time. We are now zooming in on the “mermaid’s” mind and therefore her mental state in captivity, where we see her confusion and disassociation from a more personal point of view. The repetition of the word “me” seems to say that she is trying to find out who she is. The “mermaid” has a moderate amount to say, and she seems to say it in two stanzas. This denotes a thoughtfulness on the part of the “mermaid,” and maybe a hesitance too.

Now we have a short 4-line stanza from the man’s perspective. Again, he uses the word “my” twice, referring to the “mermaid” as shining objects. We see the first use of the word “now”, which we will see many times later in the poem as a way to sooth the “mermaid” into complacency. He speaks of her “spark” for the first time, the feistiness she shows in trying to defy him. Her “spark” is the fight that she has left within her. We talk about her tail for the first time, her body, which later becomes bruised by his abuse, which he sees as “purple-blue” and beautiful. He relishes that he hurts her. He then talks about her as armor on display. Armor on display is beautiful, shining, and useless, but it also is a decoration that shows masculinity. Armor cannot fight by itself but does show a tendency of the owner of the armor to fight. He is saying that owning her, hurting her, showing her off, makes him more of a man. The man has less to say this time as his obsessiveness is not as strong now that he has his prize, but again he says everything he needs to say in one stanza.

Now we go back to the “mermaid’s” perspective. We have a 5-line stanza and an 8-line stanza. Again, the stanzas are average in length and there are two of them showing thoughtfulness and hesitation, but a moderate amount of information to give. In the 5-line stanza, she again uses the words “me” and also “my” to show that we are in her head and that she is associating more with herself. She is understanding the situation more clearly and uses the word “posture” to describe how he is controlling her behaviors.

In the 8-line stanza we go back to the issue of time. This is the crux of the poem and shows why the repetition is the poem is so important. She believes that every day was like the one before, almost as if in a “time loop”. The repetition throughout the poem is showing those time loops and the emotions that crop up for her again and again throughout this relationship. She says “It was He who was in charge” twice in this stanza. This is utterly important to inform not only her mental state, but as a window into the reality of the situation. If this stanza backs us up to view the entire poem, the repetition that “It was He who was in charge” shows us just how pervasive this control was to their whole relationship. The poem begins with “There she was”, and now we see “There was no ‘buts’ or ‘no’s’”. This also is showing the reality of that statement, zoomed back out to the 3rd person point of view that the poem started in.

We go back to the man’s perspective, again for one stanza. This stanza is shorter, now at 4 lines. We revisit the ray that originally was the “mermaid’s” smile and the “glistening” that was in her eyes, but now “the ray is no longer a ray” and her “glistening eyes had no longer wanted to play”. Her smile is no longer a smile, and she is losing the happiness in her eyes. She is losing the joy that he wanted to possess in the first place. He uses the word “now” again, this time trying to comfort himself as he notices her depletion. He then repeats “at all” signifying that this was never what he wanted. He wanted to possess her, to own her, but he also wanted to capture her happy spirit, her glow. He wanted to possess the happiness he does not feel within himself. Now that it is fading from his “mermaid”, he is starting to lament that he cannot keep the very thing he most wanted to possess.

Now we go back the “mermaid’s” perspective, this time for 4 short stanzas. Her hesitancy has doubled. We have a stanza of 6 lines, one of 1 line, one of 3 lines, and one of 5 lines. She has the same amount of information to convey, but she is telling it in a much more broken way. This also conveys the broken quality of her spirit at this point. We are back to the first-person perspective with her use of “my” speaking about her mind. She speaks of the ocean, the community she was born into. She has moved away from her home to be with him and is now regretting this decision. She talks about time again, this time in a rushed way. Before time was absent, and now time is finite. She is coming closer to ending the relationship, she is feeling pressured.

She talks about time again in the 1 line stanza, again is a rushed and finite way. The repetition of this expresses her urgency to end the relationship, her need to leave. The fact that this line is in its own stanza even though it is a repetition from the previous stanza shows how broken and fragmented she has become.

In the 3 line stanza, she again talks about the “cage” that she’s in. This time she zooms in on the “lock”, which she repeats. The lock is her analyzing the things that keep her in this relationship, including his control, and his intimacy with her. Even the good parts of their relationship are part of the “lock”. As we see with her repetition of the word “key”, she is desperate to find the way out, which she thinks will only come from him letting her go, as the “key” is under his control, a part of him.

In the 5-line stanza, she reiterates the “key” again twice, showing her growing obsession with the way out, and her repeated finding that it was impossible without his consent. She uses the word “weak” twice here, speaking of herself, but recognizing that he was the one that made her that way. Her vision is becoming clearer, she is understanding now that this is not her fault and that her “cage” is not actually one that she made for herself. She is talking in the first person, and clearer than before about what state she is currently in and why she is there. Here she speaks of “water” for the first time, as the hope that he has extinguished inside her. She has come to a clearer understanding of the situation, but her hope of solving the problem is not present.

Now we have 4 short stanzas from the man. One of 3 lines, one of 1, and 2 more of 3 lines. He is mirroring her hesitation as a means to calm her. She is at the level of hesitation where she uses 4 stanzas, and he is not using 4 stanzas to soothe her, trying to connect with her and pretend that they are similar. He tells her that she is trying to “swim” away from him, towards freedom, trying to move autonomously as she did before they met, away from the relationship, and that he doesn’t understand why she would want to do that. In reality, he knows that he is abusive, and he can see that her happiness is gone, but he still loves to see how he hurts her and is proud of the way he controls her. He is not confused at all; he just wants her to think that he wants her to be happy.

The stanza of 1-line repeats “Shh” twice, and says “hush” once. He wants her to silence her “spark”. He also says the word “now” which he often uses to soothe, and then he says “Listen to me” twice. He is bargaining with her to get her to stay. He is mirroring her, he is soothing her, he is bargaining with her. He is laying a trap so that she will continue her doubts and so that she will not leave.

The first stanza of 3 lines talks about her smile again but does not use the word “ray”. He wants her to smile, but the smile is not present. Again, he repeats “shh” twice, soothing her, and he starts using “my” not to speak about her, but to speak about his own hands, his own voice. He is trying to tell her that he does not have control over her, only himself. He is trying to make her think that he does not want to possess her, only to love her.

In the last 3-line stanza, he again uses the word “my” to talk about his own body as a means to get back the relationship they once had. He says, “I’ll always glue it back together with my body.” He uses intimacy as a tactic, apparently often, to get her to believe that he loves her and therefore to lull her back into submission. He again repeats “Shh” twice, soothing her and trying to quiet the “spark” that he sees.

Back to the “mermaid’s” perspective, we have her final stanzas. She is giving us all the information she has left, and she is giving it in 8 stanzas. Again, her hesitancy has doubled. She is a wreck. The first stanza is 5 lines, then there is one of 1 line, then one of 8, then 4, then 3, then 3, then 1, then 2. The first stanza of 5 lines talks about the cage again. She uses the word “now”, possibly mirroring him and his soothing tones. He is getting inside her head. She repeats the word “shell” twice, speaking of her emptiness and fragile emotional state. Then we zoom back out with a “There” sentence in “There is no water to breathe, to breathe, breathe, breathe”. This is the reality of the situation, she is feeling smothered and he is, in fact, doing the smothering. The “water” is the hope that she used to have inside of her, and that has left her at this point in the relationship. She repeats the word “breathe” to show the rhythmic quality of breathing, but also her desperation for the freedom that she craves.

Then we have a 1 line stanza, where she says, “He’d captured me from the ocean”. She recognizes that he had intent from the outset to possess her and control her. She is using first person again. She again references the ocean, her original free environment, her home, and how he stole her away from that life.

In the 8-line stanza she starts to question again whether he captured her or whether she did this to herself. She is vacillating between these two ideas, unsure of who to blame for the relationship. She uses the word “willingly” twice, in desperation. She is beating herself up, and she is upset that she let herself get into this situation. She fully understands now that she is being abused but is unsure of who to blame. She again talks about the “ocean”, her birth community, and now contrasts it to the “land,” her new home and the situation in which she now finds herself. She misses her home and she crave the freedom that she felt there, but feels she has made it so that she can never go back.

Now we have a 4-line stanza. She uses the word “Known” twice, again in desperation, beating herself up about not knowing better than to get into this relationship. She is becoming clearer about who she is though. She says the word “mermaid” 3 times, reminding herself of her previous glory and trying to find a way to get back to that. She is also reminding herself that she is definitely a person from the “ocean” and not a “human” from the “land”. She belongs in her homeland; she does not belong in her current location.

We have a 2-line stanza where she uses the word “known” again. Before she should have known better, now she says all she’s known was the seas, her previous experience. She was naive and inexperienced. Here she is letting herself off the hook. She is saying she could not have known that he would control her like this, because she had never been controlled like this before. This also implies that she will learn and grow from this experience and never let it happen to her again if only she can find a way out. She then goes back to what is “real”. She was a mythological being who was “real” to him. This realness was enticing to her, she wanted to be seen and understood, but when she got that, as we see earlier in the poem, it disassociates her and confuses her. She was not understood to be the person that she actually was, and she was losing the parts of herself that made her magical, her happiness and her freedom. Here she is trying to understand what qualities drew her into the relationship from the beginning. She is coming to realization that she made a good emotional decision, which he then perverted, and that it is not her fault.

In the 3-line stanza she uses the word “me” 3 times. She is now focused on herself in a way we have not seen before. This is the first time we see the word “bruise” and she starts to truly understand that her abuse is something that he did to her, not something she came with, asked for, or something that she did to herself. She says, “And in return, he left many gifts and surprises that hit me in the face. Hard.” This is a clear example of her coming to understand that he is in fact abusing her. She is trying to figure out what to do about it.

The next stanza is 1 line. This line sticks out because it is alone and does not contain any repetition. “No longer was I rare.” She was not as special as she once was, she is losing the qualities that made him prize her to begin with, but she is also losing her naivete. She is becoming stronger and wiser, but not happier. She was no longer the innocent, inexperienced girl she was when the poem began.

Her last stanza, a 2-line stanza, starts with the word “Now” by itself. She has internalized his soothing. She does not know the way out. She reiterates that she is a “mermaid,” reminding herself of her past glory, and the idea that she does not belong here. She speaks of her bruised tail, his physical abuse of her. She is clear that this is a situation caused by him, and that she was amazing before the relationship, but she does not see a way out, and is trying to sooth herself back into submission. She understands that it’s his fault and that she does not want to be in this place or in this situation, but she does not see a way out, so she is trying to convince herself that he is the man that he is when he is trying to soothe her, rather than the man that he is when he is beating her.

Now we end with the man’s perspective. He has two 3-line stanzas here at the end. This shows that he is hesitant, but longer mirroring her hesitancy. This is truly the way that he feels. In the first 3-line stanza he talks about her “spark”. Her will to be free, and how it is returned in her. He uses the word “my” again in reference to her, holding on to the idea that he owns her. Again, he talks about her as his “armor”, the useless, shiny thing that makes the owner look masculine, but now he says it wants to fight for itself. This is of course impossible, it/she does not have the will to fight for it/herself. But he sees the want in her to do so. He then calls her “it”, officially dehumanizing her. He repeats the word “flop” twice here to signify her repeated but ineffective tries to return to freedom. He talks about “swimming”, her trying to move autonomously in the world away from him. He talks about the “lock” for the first time, the mechanism by which she could possibly get out of the relationship, the “cage”.

In the last stanza of the poem, he uses the word “it” again referring to her. Her dehumanization is complete and solidified. He then uses the word “know”, the way she did when she was beating herself up. He is deriding her now. He then talks about the “key” for the first time, the actual way out of the relationship, and he says, “it’s been within her all along.” She could have escaped at any time, but because she did not know it, she stayed and slowly killed her soul. She is still convinced that she is “locked” in the “cage” and that only he can let her out of the relationship, but he knows that she could have left at any time. Not only does he know this information, but he’s cruelled about it, he derides her and calls her a “fool”. He has tricked her, manipulated her, controlled her, and this misdirection was her undoing. Whenever or not she made it out of his grasp is not shown, which makes one wonder, will the “mermaid” get her “happily ever after”? This is the difference between fairy tale and reality. One is written with an intended ending in advance for an intended audience and the other, you must write it yourself, for yourself.

The author shows the predatory intent of the man through his perspective, his obsession and need for control of the “mermaid”, and his worry about her leaving him, ending with his disdain for her and his mockery of her “foolishness” for not being able to go. The author shows from the “mermaid’s” perspective the mental and emotional struggle that comes with abuse, not only against the abuser, but against yourself. They show that sometimes you do not notice the signs of abuse until it’s too late, but that doesn’t make the abuse, or the outcomes of the relationship, your fault. Just because you opened your heart to someone does not make you a fool and does not mean that any subsequent abuse has been invited. You have the power to leave whenever you want, and even though it may be hard, all it takes is determination and confidence.