Yes, I Am

Chapter Six.

Every story has two versions- the fairytale one and the real one. The fairytale one has all the elements that make you go 'aww' and 'stop it, you' and 'this is where Disney and Nicholas Sparks meet'. The real one makes you mutter 'no' over and over again in different pitches. It has all the gruesome scenes that make life justified to earn its name, from blood to tears to horrible decisions.

Hans Christian Anderson wrote a story back in the late seventeenth century about a mermaid who sees a sinking ship from afar and saves a handsome prince from drowning. She falls in love with him but he doesn't because he doesn't even know she exists. Blind in love, she visits the sea witch who offers to give her legs in exchange for her voice. If she can get the prince to fall for her, she can stay human forever. If she doesn't, she dies. Every step she takes until then with the borrowed legs will feel like walking on shards of glass.

If you look closely enough, the math here is simple. Person is infatuated with someone from another species, a species she knows nothing about. She could be a flying mantis crashing in his face and he wouldn't know this is his lifesaver. The only way to catch attention of this person is to give up your voice and experience jaw-clenching pain. Attached clause: very real chance you could die. 

But she loved him. She LOVED him. Doesn't that justify it all?

Love makes us blind. It steals our power of thinking rationally. It makes us take courses of action that are ill-advised in the most polite terms of the sense. So obviously she takes the deal. She presses her lips together when her feet fall on the ground, her only solace in the hope that she would get to see the charming smile again. She shuts down the voice in her head that tells her she will die because she knows that reaching the end of the tunnel is worth it.

By the time she reaches the prince, he has married another woman who he thought was the girl who saved him. She can't tell him it was actually her because she has no voice. She is ordained another choice here- kill the prince and turn back into a mermaid. But even though he doesn't have a clue of her existence, she is happier sacrificing her life rather than picking up a knife and slicing her beloved's heart. See where I was going with bad decisions?

She throws herself into the sea, and turns into sea foam, entering a kind of purgatory where she has to do good deeds until she MAYBE earns a soul, which will take about 300 years to happen.

Happy endings are only in animated movies. In real, one slip of heart leads to wrong choices upon wrong choices. The mermaid just wanted the prince's heart. But it cost her her voice. Should she have walked away and killed him? Should she have not pursued him at all? Maybe she didn't understand what she was feeling before she dived into the high waters. But she knew the feeling was good. Is risking everything worth following your heart?

Disney made a movie called 'The Little Mermaid' where a mermaid rescues and falls in love with a prince. She gives up everything to search for him and despite all odds, their love survives. She gets true love's kiss and roll credits, happily every after.

One is a fairytale. One is real.

They say endings are all that matter. Whatever happens in between is just details. Mistakes are forgiven. Kisses restore life. If they ride off into the sunset, the blood in their trail doesn't matter.

The question is, after how many mistakes does it become okay to stop forgiving? After how many attempts are you supposed to stop trying before you end up dead? After how many sacrifices does the hero become a villain? When are you supposed to stop thinking with your heart and start thinking with your brain? What happens if you leave the prince?

Fairytales never tell us any of that.