Inspired by a mermaid…

So this will technically appear as my second post, but in reality it is my third. It should really have been my first. My introductory if you will. I’ve never been one for doing things in order.

I have contemplated a blog for quite a while now. I did one a few years back. It was fun and successful, but that is because it was on a specific event and to a targeted audience. I was a lay person on a medical mission team. We traveled to Ecuador and stayed in a remote Amazonian village, Guadalupe. While there we used the local clinic, along with a box truck converted to a mobile operating room, to perform many relatively simple procedures. Gallbladders, Goiters, etc. I was allowed to scrub in, I held the hands of nervous patients, I was taught to pass without contaminating, I helped in any way I could. I was given the opportunity to be the proverbial fly on the wall listening to some of the most brilliant medical minds of our time, discuss future planned advancements in their mission work. Truly an incredible experience. Definitely one worth writing about.

Enough about that though. That was then, this is now. I’ve done some local mission work since, but none that has taken me out of the country. I had always planned on eventually traveling to Africa to continue that particular journey, but for now life has stalled that plan. Perhaps someday, never say never. When and if I do, I will no doubt write about it, however past trips and possible future trips, does not provide me something current to write about today. So, back to blog ideas for the present time.

One, positively brilliant-if I do say so myself, idea I had for a blog, was what I would have called… “Jade’s jaded adventures in Wonderland”…it would have been a chronicle of my tinder date experiences. Fun, fun!

Several years ago I went through what was a pretty horrific divorce. There I was in my early forties thrown back into the single girl world. Suffice it to say things had changed a lot since I had dated last and I was not only terribly out of practice, but a little knocked around emotionally from the level of betrayal I had experienced. Well, might as well jump into the dating pool with both feet. I quickly learned that nobody seemed to meet organically anymore. I downloaded the trending app, chose some pictures I thought were not only flattering, but represented my well rounded lifestyle and wrote a brief bio introducing myself to the online dating world.

I would soon come to find that the tinder men fell in two camps…1-looking for a “hook-up” or 2-looking for “the one”. Falling somewhere in between that myself, I erased my bio and changed to the tag line “I have no plan beyond coffee”. And that was the truth!

Oh the stories I have. Every blog post would be the details of a date in all its sitcom worthy awkwardness. Sometimes I could hear the laugh track in my mind. A select few made it to a second date, but a third was elusive. I occasionally accepted one, but would later bail. Good times!

Well, look at that, I’m back in the past again talking about what I could’ve done! Obviously I never did get around to putting pen to paper, or fingertips to keyboard, on that idea. And eventually a planned third date was kept. That gave way to a fourth and fifth and then the weeks rolled into months. Before I knew it, I had found myself in a relationship. There goes that blog idea.

So, my first post divorce relationship…almost three years of on and off again drama. Teenage angst in midlife never looked so good. He’s a story that might be worth telling, but I haven’t found my words yet. It was a complex connection, one that would take more space than I have here to explain. For now he shall stay privately tucked away and placed in a safe spot, maybe to be looked at later on another platform. We’ll see.

Back to the Mermaid inspiration for this blog…I live in a small seaside community. I have always felt drawn to the water for as far back as I can remember, and not only am I a stones throw from it at all times here in my hometown, but my current career consists of my being surrounded by boats, beach, and the sea. What a place to call your office. Resisting the urge to say “hashtag blessed” right now. < corny, I know! I am though…blessed that is. While individual details of my life, standing on their own as a singular experience, may look particularly challenging, I have been gifted with the Grace to see the good side of most things. The beauty in moments. I live a life I like, and I’m as happy alone as I am with a partner. As a matter of fact, I was beginning to think maybe even more so being alone.

Ahhh, but then it happened. This local boy sailed into my life, and everything changed. He was a fine sailor, who had been right under my nose. I didn’t find him on an app. I didn’t resist a second or third date with him. This sailor is far from perfect, but perfect enough for me. He is the sailor who I wrote of in my second, now deleted, post on this blog.

Why did I delete it? It was too out of order, even for me. And it was a sweet, personal memory. Not one to be shared from a place of hostile retaliation directed toward a past lover of his. It is real, and true, and mine to be held near to my heart always. When and if I share the tale, as it is my story to tell, it will be from a place purely of fond recall.

Now, about this past lover of his, enter “the mermaid”…yes, she fancies herself a mermaid, hence my previous mermaid hating post. Now I’m not usually the sort to display, or even have, such animosity toward an ex lover of my current lover. This one however, warrants an exception. Aside from mentioning that I landed here in WordPress due to her creative tagging of my boyfriend in some outlandish blog posts, I shall not use this time and space to shout out her list of atrocities, I’m just going to ask you to take my word for it.

As previously mentioned, being a lover of the sea, I am also a lover of the creatures that dwell in it. Seahorses hold a particular fascination. While their appearance seems almost magical enough to be as mythical as a mermaid, they are in fact real. Aside from being fascinating in all the very factual ways they are, the mythology behind them is equally delightful. As highlighted in that previous post the folklore between Seahorses and mermaids stands in sharp contrast to each other. It doesn’t take any deep pondering to see the points I am making there.

There you have it. I was upset with a meddling mermaid and took to a safe outlet to express my frustrations. I wrote a silly story, as opposed to acting out in any other way. In doing so, I was reminded how right it feels to express myself through the written word. I don’t lay claim to being any great writer, the next Hemingway I am not, but I can string together some words in a cohesive thought pattern to tell a story. Oh, and I’ve got stories…

If anybody stops by to read this, and hasn’t been bored to tears already, please stop by to read my next post. I have new ideas brewing for the direction of this blog. Not a one having to do with mermaids. I do owe her a debt of gratitude though for the inspiration. I guess it’s true, inspiration can be found in the damnedest of places…

Virtual hugs & salty kisses to y’all