Not Every Shore Is Safe To Stay On
At dusk, when the sea softened into silver and the sky lost its sharp edges, a mermaid came close to the shore.
She did not come every night. The sea had its own claims on her, and she belonged to its rhythms more deeply than she could explain. But sometimes, when the tide was gentle and the wind did not ask too much, she rose from the water and drifted near enough to see the lights of the village.
There was a man who often stood at the edge of the swash zone, where the sea washed over his feet and then pulled away again.
He did not shout to her. He did not throw nets. He did not call her a miracle, which was a relief. Miracles are exhausting when one is simply trying to breathe.
He only watched with a quietness she understood. Over time, she came closer.
First, only enough for him to see the shape of her in the water. Then close enough for him to see her face. Then close enough for them to speak across the narrow distance between land and sea.
He told her about the shore: the village fires, the bread cooling on windowsills, the sound of rain on roofs, the ordinary griefs of people who believed themselves entirely separate from the tides.
She told him about the sea: the cold green dark, the pull of currents, the old songs beneath storms, the way the body learns where it belongs without ever needing to put it into words.
He did not laugh at her strangeness. She did not dismiss his longing. And so, something tender grew between them.
Not simple. Not easy. But real.
Some evenings, he would step closer to the water. Some evenings, she would swim closer to the shore. The space between them narrowed until it felt, almost, like a mistake that could be corrected. Almost.
Because the mermaid knew something the man could not feel from where he stood. The shore looked gentle from the sea. Warm sand. Human hands. A place to rest without being carried by a current.
But when she came too close for too long, her body began to change.
Her breath grew shallow. Her skin tightened. Her thoughts, usually fluid and deep, became small and sharp. The rhythm inside her — the one that told her when to rise, when to dive, when to hide from storms — grew faint.
On land, she could be near him. But she could not remain herself.
One evening, the man stood where the waves broke softly around his ankles. The mermaid floated a little farther out than usual, facing him directly, her expression clear enough that he understood before she spoke.
“You could come closer,” he said. His voice was not cruel. That was what made it harder.
“I could,” she said. And she could. For a while.
Long enough to make it seem possible. Long enough to make him believe closeness was only a matter of courage. Long enough, perhaps, to convince herself that love should be able to solve the small inconvenience of having a body with requirements.
Bodies, unfortunately, are rude like that.
“But I cannot stay where I cannot breathe,” she said. The tide moved between them. He looked at the water, then at her, “You are leaving?”
“No,” she said. “I am staying where I can live.”
There was no dramatic wave. No curse. No punishment from the gods. Only the quiet ache of two beings learning that care does not always erase difference.
The Body Remembers The Crossing
The mermaid did not swim away because she loved him less. She kept the distance because she knew what it cost to cross it. Some people learn this the hard way.
They enter the room, answer the message, take the trip, host the visit, say yes to the plan, sit through the conversation, stay at the table, remain available, remain pleasant, remain reachable, remain “fine.” And from the outside, it looks like closeness.
From the inside, it can feel like leaving yourself behind one small piece at a time.
This is especially true when you live with fibromyalgia, chronic illness, sensory sensitivity, grief, burnout, or a nervous system that has had quite enough of being brave, thank you very much.
There are connections you may deeply value that still cost more than your body can pay. There are places you may enjoy for an hour that undo you for three days. There are people you may love who still pull you into a version of yourself that becomes tense, masked, vigilant, overextended, or strangely silent.
This is the part that can be difficult to explain. Because “I care about you” and “I cannot stay close in this way” sound, to many people, like opposites. But they are not.
Sometimes they are the same sentence trying to survive in two languages.
The Shore Keeps Its Own Account
The body understands this before the mind does. A sensitized nervous system does not measure closeness only by affection. It also measures noise, expectation, unpredictability, emotional intensity, travel, light, smell, posture, sleep disruption, decision fatigue, and the invisible labor of being socially legible when your inner world has gone feral in slippers.
To someone else, the shore may look harmless.
To someone else, the shore may look harmless.
To your body, it may be too bright, too loud, too demanding, too full of unsaid things, too difficult to leave when you need to leave.
That does not make you cold. It does not make you dramatic. It does not mean you are bad at relationships. It may simply mean your body has learned where it can breathe.
Fibromyalgia often asks a person to become honest in ways that feel socially inconvenient. You learn that willingness is not the same as capacity. You learn that love is not an unlimited energy source. You learn that “I want to” does not magically become “I can,” no matter how beautifully someone phrases the invitation.
This is not failure. It is discernment. And discernment can feel lonely when other people only see the distance, not the cost of closing it.
She Stayed With Herself
The mermaid’s boundary was not a rejection of the man on the shore. It was a refusal to abandon the sea inside her. She did not make the distance to punish him. She kept it because without it, she would slowly become someone neither of them could truly love.
This is the quieter truth many of us come to only after years of overriding ourselves: a boundary is not always a wall. Sometimes it is a shoreline. A place where love can come near without asking the body to drown on dry land.
You are allowed to care from a distance. You are allowed to step back before collapse becomes the price of connection. You are allowed to know that a place can be beautiful and still not be where you can live.
The mermaid kept the distance. Not because her heart was small. Because her body was telling the truth.
And sometimes the most loving thing we can do is believe the tide before it has to become a storm.
