When We Believed in Mermaids

by Barbara O'Neal

Resistance will break you. Kill you. The only way to survive is to let go.

Thinking of her in the times before she turned into the later version of herself,

When did I stop carrying books around with me?

Now that I’ve grown into my hungers,

Sex is a biological imperative, and all sorts of systems are improved with regular intercourse. Sex for one is fine, and it can burn off a lot of bad energy, but sex for two is way more fun. Skin-to-skin eases the human animal.

We walk every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday right after the kids go to school. She’s a stay-at-home mother with a vibrant mummy blog, so her hours are her own the same way mine are.

Dozens of movies were made, often with overtly sexual themes and often with women in roles that acknowledged their sexuality and their ambition.

It startles me that there was so much freedom of story, of power in women’s hands, such a long time ago. For the space of a few breaths, I wonder how life would be different for women if those stories had been allowed, embraced. Even celebrated.

“I’d love that.” Instead of rushing in with questions or comments, she waits for me to keep talking, a listening trick she learned at AA that would have made my childhood ten thousand times better.

I used to protest, but a counselor finally told me that the more I resisted the emotions of my PTSD, the worse it would get. To overcome it, I have to be present with it. So I head inside and pour a fresh cup of tea. The screen of my memory flashes with images from the earthquake that gave me the scar on my face—the noise, the screams, the blood everywhere from the wound on my head and the wound in my belly. All of it.

maybe three lanes wide.

I don’t even remember learning to swim, any more than I remember learning to walk.

He’s ever so slightly overweight, carrying the extra right over his belt line, which makes me like him more—the sign of a man who relishes life.

I liked having someone who knew when our clothes needed to be washed and who made us follow a system—shower, brush and braid hair, brush teeth, lay out clothes for the next day.

Before he even finishes the sentence, I’m laughing, the pleasure coming from somewhere in my body that I’d forgotten. “I don’t know that I believe you.”

“There are seasons of darkness, yes? Loss and sadness all around.” He tightens his grip. “But if you are patient, the circle turns, and then there is happiness all around, everything good, everyone happy.” He flings a hand out, palm up, as if scattering glitter. “My friend, he just forgot that happiness is part of living too.”

I slam back into my body all at once, and it feels sad and exhausting, and all my problems are piled up, waiting for me.

As it was on the ferry, we kiss for a long time, and I marvel that only kissing can fill so much need.

Lying against him in the puddles of sunshine, thoroughly and deeply sated, I realize what I never understood about grown-up men is how much more they would have learned about women’s bodies on their journey.

ablutions

Every girl needs a mother who protects her with a savage fury. Mine didn’t even meow in my direction.

I was always good at physical things.

I missed my real sister, the one who whispered with me, the one who used to be in my corner, but I couldn’t find a way to reach her. She had disappeared into another life, and I didn’t know how to follow her there.

I was so ashamed and filthy that I couldn’t bear to even think about it, much less confess it to anyone. Even Kit.

This is the family I wanted so desperately when I was a child, and I created it for myself. I’ve also transformed myself from a lost, drunken wanderer into a woman with purpose, a successful businessperson.

I escaped. Escaped the woman I became after Billy. I took myself back, made myself over, became a woman I am proud of.

“Passion ruined my family’s lives. I make it a practice to avoid it.” “Love is not always destructive,” he says quietly, and slides a finger up my shin. “Sometimes love creates.” I’m unexpectedly caught by something in his voice, a promise I can barely see, shimmering faintly on the horizon, and that scares me enough to throw out a gauntlet. “Tell me a time that love didn’t destroy what it first created.” He is divorced, clearly not involved with anyone. “In your own life,” I add.

My body is soft from making love, a delicious laziness in my spine. When he pauses at the door, I lift a hand to wave, and he blows a kiss.

How did my loser sister, the druggie and alcoholic who stole everything I owned at a time I could barely feed myself, land on her feet like this? When I am— What? Alone. I am alone. With no family. No children. No husband.

The rage eases, leaving behind the most profound urge to sob, but I observe this too and let it go.

In comparison, my life suddenly looks very thin. Thin and wan and lonely.

It soothed the shattered, angry girl who lived inside me, screaming all the time.

But it’s not about comparison, as my counselor used to say. My pain is my pain.

I would make it better if I could, but I think you’ve just got to be sad for a while.”

It’s a wordless, seemingly endless wave of emotion, and I’m helpless against it.

“Your quest is powerful. You needn’t apologize for the space it takes.”

I suddenly wish that I could sit with him like this many times, over many years.

She detoxed in a thirty-day residential program, then dedicated herself to AA, going to meetings every day, sometimes twice or three times.

The human body is a delicate, amazing creation. It takes almost nothing to completely destroy it, and yet it takes a lot.

Because we are twin souls, you and I.” “Alma gemela,”

I am alive. I am human. I am loved.