Crude Awakening -- I'm not a mermaid.

We’ve all heard about the BP oil spill. We’ve heard the talk that Obama is to blame, we’ve heard that BP is to blame, we’ve heard that the Cosmos are to blame and this is yet another sign that the world is going to be destroyed. And because we’ve heard this again and again, we think we’re informed.

When I first discovered I was going to Florida, I was on Cloud Nine. It wasn’t the hotel I was looking forward to, or the car ride, or the attractions, or the surfers. The main reason I was so excited was because for the first time I was going to view the ocean with my own eyes.

It may not seem like that big of a deal to you. But in all those songs, poems, and movies that make up our world, we hear it. We hear about the seashells, the dolphins, the fish, the sharks, the salt, the smell, the waves, the freedom, and the beauty. As a child, it was there – “Sally sells seashells down by the sea shore.” I remember watching Fantasia, Free Willy, and The Little Mermaid and wanting to go “Under the Sea” so badly. The Discovery Channel added to my imaginings with all of their beautiful footage. I remember seeing a copy of an ancient National Geographic with a picture of a whale on it that I saw at a garage sale once. I was in maybe the first grade. But I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I was so amazed that the guy just gave it to me.

I wanted to grow up and be Ariel. I loved that her best friends were Flounder, Scuttle, and even cranky Sebastian. I eventually snapped out of Disney and realized I was never going to be able to become a mermaid. But I still thought it would be so cool to swim in the ocean, whether I had fins or not.

The sea has always filled me with wonder, just as I’m sure it’s filled everyone with wonder the first time they’ve seen it. I doubt higher powers, but if there are such things, I know that as much terror and hate that they allow in the world, there’s one thing that they did right – the ocean.

Ever since I knew the date of my trip I’ve been humming “Somewhere, beyond the sea, somewhere, waiting for me…” and annoying all of my sisters. Sentimental as I am, I imagined my trip would be like an old film. I pictured sundresses, floppy hats, red lipstick, pearls, sun block on my nose…all of those excellent clichés. I had everything planned out.

When I first heard about the BP oil spill, I got worried. I was so worried my trip would be canceled. Our hotel reservations couldn’t be canceled after a certain date while still getting our money back, however. And when that date passed, the oil still hadn’t hit where I was going to be staying.

But now it has.

When I first decided to write on the oil spill, I realized that I needed to research. I really didn’t know many facts; I had just heard pretty much everyone’s opinion on it and had gone from there. But when I started to Google, the images I saw amazed me.

So many animals are dying, and though there are efforts to help and volunteers are on the clock, progress doesn’t seem like it’s being made. Volunteers clean one seagull up, and have to hand the poor thing to somebody else so they can go and clean another one that just came in.

It’s tragic.

I don’t know how else to say it. The pictures I saw were just…horrible. Absolutely horrible.

And then I realized how selfish I was being.

People have been saying “oh well it’s the president’s fault,” “no, it’s the big oil rigs’ fault.” No. It’s our fault. There isn’t anyone else to blame. The buck has to stop. This oil spill is just the current headline. Think of the forests we continue to tear down, the landfills we continue to pile up, the pollution we continue to put out. Google did its work well. When I hit the images button there were pages upon pages of pictures of animals that had been harmed, sometimes killed, due to this particular oil spill.

It makes me wonder. We’ve had other oil spills before this one. None to this degree, but we have oil spills all the time. How many creatures have become endangered, nay, gone extinct, because of something we have caused?

And it isn’t just the animals. Fishermen are out of work, restaurants are out of business, and we’re already in a recession, folks. This is affecting everyone and it will continue to do so. We’re poisoning our air; we’re poisoning our oceans…it all comes down to one thing. We’re poisoning the very Earth.

The problem? Guess who lives there. Yeah.

My original rant before I decided to check the Google machine said a lot about apathy, something I’ve referred to before as humanity’s worst enemy. When I sat down to write this, my hypocrisy smacked me in the face.

I warn people to avoid apathy at all costs; that it is a destroyer and will bring the end to us if we let it. Yet I, silly girl that I am, was upset because my trip to Florida was going to be ruined. God forbid I didn’t get my Leave It to Beaver style vacation.

I thought this trip was going to be a symbol of my childhood and womanhood coming together. I’m not the freckled kid pretending to be a mermaid in the bathtub anymore. I’ve reached the point when I’m almost an adult.

This trip was supposed to be the combination of the two. I was finally going to be able to go to the sea, just like I had always wanted as a kid. I was finally going to be traveling, something I swore as an adult I'd do. Now I'm going to go on "vacation" and see if they let underage tourists volunteer to help.

This whole situation reminds me of the book The Road by Cormac McCarthy. If you've never read it and wish to, stop reading now because I'm going to ruin it, even though I hate when people do that. And it's an excellent book. So stop. Now.

The Road is set in post-apocalypse. It never explains why or what happened; that's just how the world is now.The main characters' names are never mentioned; they're always called either the man and the boy or the father and the son. They're the only people alive; the boy was born into this world and his mother ended up killing herself and leaving her husband to care for the kid. Now they're following the road to get to the Coast. It never explains why they're headed toward the Coast, just that that's where they're going.

To me, the Coast is like the light at the end of Daisy's dock (wow, awesome Gatsby reference if I do say so myself). It's the only thing that's keeping them going - this idea of there being something else. The boy, who has seen so many horrible things it's unbelievable, is really excited about seeing the ocean. He's never really seen the color blue before because everything is covered in ash and nothing ever grows. His dad tells him all about the sea and its creatures and how big and blue it is. They get there...

And keep in mind that there've been cannibals throughout all of this, I mean, they've seen horrible, horrible things. The kid saw a charred baby on a spit (which McCarthy describes in vivid detail), he had brain matter splattered all over his face from when his father shot a cannibal, he saw people with half-eaten limbs locked in a storage basement so the cannibals can have a constant food supply...Horrible, horrible things.

But they get to the ocean. And it's black. Dead. No Flounder. No Sebastian. No orca named Willy.

To me, even after all of the horrible and sickening things that had happened, this was the lowest part of the book.

And look at what's happening now.

I'm scared that I'm going to go to Florida and feel like the boy in The Road. I've read a few of McCarthy's novels and trust me, I don't want to be compared to any of his characters. Of that I can assure you. (And if you're a fan of his, you know what I mean.)

I'm scared that there won't be any Flounders or Sebastians. I'm scared that if I have children and I take them to the beach, they'll have no idea what I'm talking about when I describe how I imagined being a mermaid and swimming with the creatures of the deep blue.

But you know what, it's okay. It isn't too late. I'm not a mermaid. But I can make sure that there still are sea creatures for Disney to look to when making a new cartoon movie. My failed dream vacation does not matter. But the ocean and its life must live on. Or there won't ever be dream vacations like mine.

I'm awake now.