How Not to Drown

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter One

I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever get out of this rut I’m in. Some people say it’s quarter-life crisis hitting me hard. Others say that I’m getting to know myself better. That I’m finding who I really am.

After two years of searching outside and within, I finally know what I want to do. It’s just that, I don’t know how I’ll ever break out with probably a million others who have the same dreams as I do. Out of so many fish in the sea, how do I stand out? How do I be different from all the rest?

I never realized how much I loved writing until I almost forgot that I enjoyed doing it so much. I almost forgot about something I loved to do because I stopped doing it. I stopped doing it for myself. I just stopped.

I overheard this in the office sometime last week.

“I feel empty. It’s not that I don’t like the job I have now, I actually enjoy it. I just feel like there’s something missing inside me and I don’t know what it is.”

Then it hit me. I wasn’t alone.

Waiting for Life to Happen

Do not.

Do not wait for your life to happen.

It is already happening. You are alive.

Life does not happen the moment you get promoted.

It does not begin when you get a boyfriend or get married.

Life happens during those dark lonely hours when you feel you’re unloved.

Life happens when you cry in pain because exercising seems too much of a struggle but you need to do it.

Life happens in moments when you just don’t know what to do next.

It’s okay not to know what to do next.

What is NOT okay is to not know what to do or where you’re going.

At least know what you want to do now.

Yes, now.

Write? Go write.

Want to look and feel better? Hit the pool or gym or whatever makes you feel healthier.

Buy that bikini? Go ahead, splurge a little. You deserve to spend sometimes.

Do what you want to do now.

Do what makes you feel alive and what makes others feel alive, joyful.

Start with one thing and keep doing it.

Do not stop if it brings you joy.

Do not stop if it brings you satisfaction.

Do not stop if you are scared.

Life is about risk. You are not risking anything if you are not afraid.

So go on, do the first thing on your almost-forgotten list.

But let me remind you again, that life is not waiting for you to make it happen.

Life is happening.

Life is now.

You are alive.

Go and feel it.

Yes, you are alive.

You just have to choose and to act.

Do it now.

You’ll never get back the second you spent reading the next word.

Just go and do it.

Love life.

Live.

 

A Mermaid’s Tail

 

As a child, playing along the ocean’s shores never gave the same joy when swimming beneath the waves. Imagining with my entire little child mind that a mermaid would want to swim up and invite me to live in their castle under the sea.

Without a moment of hesitation, I’d grab her hand and go. Fishes swim before my eyes and I quickly chase them. After all, they could lead me to their mermaid friends.

I know you what you might be thinking. This writer doesn’t know a thing about tales! That’s what she should have written in her title. Sorry but this is really a tale about my tail.

Anatomically speaking, mermaids have tails. It’s the end of a beautiful womanlike creature that is supposed to have legs instead of a fish tail. Mysterious, elusive and captivating…

Yes, they do exist! Please do not give me a lecture that just like Santa Claus, mermaids are our parents’ figment of imagination.

Mermaids are real and they are here. They live amongst us. Trying hard to blend in with the land-loving two legged creatures called humans, these mermaids have albeit slowly found their voices back.

Poor broken things, they lost their tails and could not swim. Forced to adapt to unfamiliar land, they had to survive or else lose their species entirely.

The tail is what propels these mermaids down to great depths. They seemed to have forgotten how to breathe underwater but some of them can reach up to a minute beneath the sea!

I guess like learning how to sing, practice makes you reach notes you haven’t reached before. Now these modern mermaids need to keep singing the song of the ocean, this time only louder. Bolder than before, even if they only have the tips of their tails to start the ocean song.

So first, you find your voice. Then you find your tail. Afterwards, all you need is a big ocean of salty freedom and the song is all yours to swim – err sing.