“I must be a mermaid. I have no fear of depths, and a great fear of shallow living.”
-Anais Nin
A shallow life. Is there any storyline more terrifying? Come to think of it, parts of Anais Nin’s collection ‘Delta of Venus’ could come close, but with her sentiment above, I wholeheartedly identify. Without treading into deeper waters, can we call it living at all?
I’ve felt this mermaid calling inside me for as long as I can remember, though it wasn’t until finally naming it years into adulthood that the pieces fell into place. I have friends who like to sprinkle their fairy essence on life and those who cultivate their witchiness through herbs and spells and tonics. It’s magic.
But me? I’m a mermaid. My love of the sea, my immediate feeling of home in harbor-side villages I have never before visited, my wild (and stubbornly untamable) mermaid hair and passion for the conservation of every fish, shark, sea turtle, whale, seal, you name it, that lives in our seas. The stink of salt marsh is perfume to my nostrils. At the age of 2 or 3, my mother said I watched Disney’s The Little Mermaid so many times that I would repeat along with every word as it played. Even strangers have commented on my mermaid likeness. It’s in my essence.
While this craving for depth lies at a soul level, it’s also inspired me to often take the road less traveled. Move across the country with nothing but my dog, my car, and immense hope I’ll figure it out? Sounds like a plan! Fulfill a lifelong pipe dream of learning to bartend 6 months after completing my Master’s degree? Absolutely. My less conventional decisions have always made for my best stories.
So when I only half-jokingly told my friends my plan of meeting up in Norway with the dazzlingly handsome blonde-haired, blue-eyed Scandinavian man whom I had very briefly met on a dive boat in the Galapagos Islands 5 years prior, and how we were going to fall in love, and how I would ultimately live out my dream of moving to Norway to be with him, this did not strike them as overly odd. Nor did it seem out of character to animatedly tell the man I was very casually dating at the time about this plan and my need to remain single. I had met this “Swedewegian”, as I called him, for a total of approximately 3 hours, he asked? Yes. I had no idea if he was even currently single? Yes, again. Wasn’t that overly optimistic of me? Why yes, but then… Why not?
It should come as no surprise, then, when I tell you that one year and one month after a few days of whirlwind romance in the Nordics, I drove away from my lovely solo apartment in Asheville, NC, my car loaded to the brim with all I could not bear to sell or give away, with the dream of my new life spanning out before me. I was moving to Norway.
I had it all planned out. I would spend 6-8 months traveling- visiting friends and family in the US, seeing my way around Eastern Europe, doing work-trade experiences on farms or vineyards, meeting up with my Swedewegian along the way. While my travels weren’t quite as glamorous as I hoped (they never are, are they?), I kept good on my plan, and in January of 2020 I sold my last great monetary possession- my much-beloved Subaru. February 2020 arrived and I had found my way to Oslo to join the Swedewegian, declaring to all of Facebook that I was in Norway to stay. I would find a local job and get a work permit, and if I couldn’t find one I would just travel again. I was free, unencumbered, living in the way I knew would transform my life forever. What could go wrong?
John Lennon once said that life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. You could take a guess how the next dozen and a half months played out, trying to move abroad amidst a pandemic with no home of my own, legal residency, a job, or even a car to fall back on, but I’m not sure anyone could imagine just how grueling and ridiculous the reality really was. So many events that, like a horrible date, will be hilarious in retrospect. This date still hasn’t quite ended. And yet, through some version of stubborn, masochistic perseverance, thousands of pages of paperwork, numerous unplanned trips, the most amazingly selfless partner and friends and family, and changing my living space literally 61 times, here I am in Oslo with Norwegian residency.
I made it! Hooray! I’m living my dream! …. And I have absolutely no idea what I am doing.
I am a mermaid out of water.
So what is this blog, and why am I writing? Like all things, it’s a journey, partially through a hope to inspire and help and amuse others who, like me, feel so very lost in this crazy new world, and also a space for me to make some sense out of the strangeness that has become my life, a bizarre and winding roadmap of sorts… a passion project or the response to a premature midlife crisis. Some posts may be funny, some will be earnest, some may be punny, because who doesn’t love a good pun? There will be connections to fairytales and folklore and the importance and meaning behind the stories we tell ourselves. There will be musings in celebration of the wisdom of my personal heroes- Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Mary Oliver, Jane Goodall, and more. Above all, I can promise these words will be authentic. We need more truth and authenticity if we are to survive and thrive in these wild times.
So join me, if you feel so inspired, as I navigate these uncharted depths, at times gasping for air and flopping ungracefully and embarrassingly along the shoreline. It will be a strange and wondrous trip.
A Mermaid Out of Water 