GET ME OUT OF THIS TANK!

So yeah, my Uncle Mike always said there was drama on the mountain. Families pass down land, recipes, fine china… and drama. Because if there’s one thing humans do better than breathing, it’s family drama.

And Driskills?

We love the drama.

My mythological origins derive from a place called Driskill Mountain, Louisiana.

Five hundred and thirty-five feet above sea level. The highest point in the entire state.

Louisiana’s largest speed bump.

Honestly, it’s just a big hill.

But who makes a mountain out of a molehill?

A Driskill.

So here I am, among the last of my father’s line. But that’s a genealogy special for another evening. I suppose I should start by explaining what in the catfish-fried heck is going on with this website.

Mermaids?

Mountains?

Underwater government conspiracies?

On August 15th, 2025 — the year of our Lord — the Mermaids of America were given directive by the Galactic Federation to go public and reveal our true origins.

So far, I have been the only one vocal enough to create an entire website and publish a tail-all poetic memoir of my 3,749 years of life.

But again.

Driskills love the drama.

And I am its mama.

Now, though I am thrilled to release these 3,749-year-old aches from my sunken chest, I must clarify something for TMZ:

I am only HALF-FISH.

My other half is Puerto Rican.

Just regular, land-dwelling, tax-paying-in-spirit Puerto Rican people.

My late Uncle Mike — who passed at the tender age of 45,867 (marlin years) — was also half marlin. His marlin form now hangs in memoriam in the barn hall. Very tasteful. Very taxidermied. Very bayou chic. When I was just the tender age of 5, we traveled down in our camper for a family trip. But no one told me this was actually my initiation.

This is when I saw mergrand's tail for the first time! And Uncle Mike grew a marlin spine by midnight. What in the catfish-fried heck. On day 3, I was thrown in the Big Miss to see what I would be! Grandpa prayed for the first half-shark in the bloodline, Uncle Mike wanted another Marlin splashin' around, but Mergrand knew in her heart what I was gonna be from the sparkle in my eyes I got from her. Mergrand was the most beautiful and kindest lady I had ever sen or met. I always knew she was special, and because of her, I am special.

Enough 'bout mergrand, I could go on all day. I do miss her. But my captors like to say because I'm only half-fish and a traveling performer who couldn't visit home very often, I never cared about my fish family. Sugars, when you know the truth in your heart and you align with the most high - they can say whatever they want to fill their front porch cigarette talk.

Let 'em talk. The tree stumps can hear. They don't take too kindly to folk who trash talk the daughter of the mountain. Make no mistake.

Some members of the Mermaids of America have made salacious accusations that my campaign is merely an agenda for self-advancement and notoriety.

Abhorrent!

While they litter the beaches of Gulf Shores every spring break with unintelligibly young human folk, I sit in a TANK.

Inside a BARN.

On DRISKILL MOUNTAIN, LOUISIANA.

Because my Uncle Mike up and died on me — and he died so fast we didn’t get the paperwork filed that would officially render me… human-adjacent.

It’s been two years. Two years. And nothing has been sent to a judge so I can have rights - or at least a say - over my own family land.

So here I remain. Eight more years, they say. Eight.

Sugars.

The anger that boiled in my amphibious veins could’ve powered the Hoover Dam.

It catapulted one heck of a spiritual awakening.

I've screamed and cried until I've forgotten who I am, I lost my whole half-fish family, they're all dead. Story for another day.

And now?

I can only thank the poachers who did this to me for my beautiful, beautiful trash tank.

Technically, I don’t have human documents. No number. No certificate. My Uncle hid this secret as long as he could.

Until the jig was up.

He wasn’t dead a full day before I passed out in a wheelbarrow from shock — one too many piña coladas for my troubled woes. I was rudely awakened from my sweet wheelbarrow slumber by someone asking about the whereabouts of the zero-turn mower and if it was for sale.

The man had just died.

I was still seeing stars.

Then a neighbor squints and goes,“Uh… Dakota? Why is half your body a fish?”

Dadgummit.

From Baton Rouge to Shreveport, the news spread faster than church gossip:

The Driskill girl is a fish.

And she’s been a fish the whole time.

Uncle Mike assured me I could blindly trust the people he left in charge. Said they’d take care of me. They were his 'best friends'. They'd work tirelessly for my rights.

I believed that part. I trusted my Uncle, but he was wrong.

Long story short?

They took me for a fool.

They took me for stupid.

So now I sit in this tank for eight more years while they rent the house out to a nice, fully-documented human family.

They get the porch.

I get the barn.

They get central air.

I get filtered hose water.

They harvested the trees my grandparents planted — thirty years of sweat and vision — and didn’t even let me out of the tank to watch the timber fall.

They pocketed the money, too.

Should I wave the white flag?

Cue TAPS on the trumpet, Tommy D.

Give the people what they want! A mermaid harpoon! Mount me to the bow of the ship! Solve the “problem.”

But no.

I had dreams for this land. A tree memorial burial ground for veterans and servicemen.

(Also a clever way to reduce property tax. Let’s be honest. I have ran a few successful operations in my 3,749 years of living undercover, but they don't wanna listen to a half-puerto rican / half-fish. There are 'liabilities' if it is determined I do not have rights. When my Uncle left everything to me. There was just this one technicality. The human or mermaid species thing. I'm both.)

Instead?

They want to put up a mobile home park.

On my family’s land.

It’s like dollar-sign amnesia took over.

This is not what my Uncle wanted. I know that in my bones. And in my fins.

So how can you help?

Proceeds from Love, The Mississippi Mermaid go toward legal fees to fight for my own human rights — and my rights to the 135-acre tree farm and my Uncle’s home.

Tell your friends.

Come see the show.

It’s a mermaid cabaret coming to a piano bar near you.

COME SEE THE FREAK AND HER TREASURE TROVE OF WHITE-TRASH-AMERICAN,

MILITARY-FAMILY, DRISKILL ADVENTURES.

We may be washed up.

We may be disgraced.

We may have a family tree that looks like it got hit by a lightning strike.

But we all gotta keep swimming, right?

Let me show you how.

I’ve got nothing left to lose. At this point my life might be more comfortable lived in a tuna can — but why give vandals what they want?

What do you call it when folks know you’ve got no backup, no safety net, no cavalry coming — just the memory of your uncle and your own stubborn heartbeat — and they still make every decision for you?

Drama?

Or survival?

So I rigged internet in the barn.

And I will be posting every unhinged truth until this gets sorted on Dr. Phil, Judge Judy, or the Food Network if necessary.

I even called the police on myself.

The Bienville Parish Police Department took pity on my case. I am now under the care of a new division: “Driskill Mountain Wildlife & Oddities.”

Louisiana Animal Control has gently suggested tanks for river mermaids are frowned upon.

I am happier.

But I am not free.

What would you do? Seriously? I got lawyers on the case. But what would you do for your heart? During this hellish waiting game?

When everyone makes decisions for you?

When you don’t even feel like you have the right to feel?

When grief, land, bloodline, and bureaucracy mix into one murky river?

For two years I wrote an entire book while waiting for their lawyer to draft one single page to send to a judge.

Make it make sense.

But darling, don’t you see?

It was through this pain that I found my own heart again. I stitched it back together, scale by scale.

The war is far from over.

But I am in control of my heart.

My thoughts.

My body.

And what I allow to consume me.

These poems were born in unkind waters.

And if you’re drowning too —

maybe they can help you swim.

Love, The Mississippi Mermaid