Me: draws a siren literally plotting murder
Also me: sighs “Wow, this is so romantic!”
Suffering from Epic: The Musical is the kind of song that completely messes with your head. The siren gives you everything you think you want—everything. She becomes Penelope, Odysseus’s wife, and suddenly, he’s not fighting through wars or monsters. Instead, he’s standing face-to-face with the dream he’s been chasing all this time. She’s begging him to join her in the water, to leave everything behind and be with her forever.
But Odysseus? He’s not fooled. He’s onto her. He sees through the illusion. She’s pretending to be Penelope, offering him the one thing he’s been fighting for all along—the appearance of his wife, and yet, it’s all just a trap. He’s using her. He’s using her manipulation to get closer to the information he needs to finally return to Penelope, to the woman he truly loves.
And God, when he sings “The things I’d do for you,” it’s like a gut punch. There’s such longing in his voice. He’s willing to sacrifice everything for his wife, and that kind of devotion? God, give me a man who would burn the world down for me like that. The things I’d do for him…
But here’s the thing—the surface of this song is so romantic. It sounds like a dream. “Come play with me in the water.” That sweet, almost innocent request. That feeling of being wanted, needed, loved in the purest sense. But underneath it all, it’s a death sentence. The siren, even though she appears to be Penelope, is trying to lure him to his death.
And here’s where my mind goes: how much of this is like maladaptive daydreaming? The siren’s voice is seductive because it offers the dream—that idealized version of love, the one you’ve been imagining in your head, the one you’re always chasing but can never quite hold onto. I’m so guilty of it—falling in love with the vision of someone in my mind, or a fictional character, the fantasy of them that I’ve created. But the problem is, that love isn’t real. You can’t love someone who doesn’t exist, and in doing that, you rob yourself of living your actual life. It’s like dissociation: the dream world feels so much easier, so much more comforting than the real one.
The siren, in a way, represents that distorted vision of love. She offers everything you’ve ever wanted, but at what cost? Sure, it’s romantic, but it’s toxic. It’s a trap, and the real love—what Odysseus has with Penelope—is what he’s fighting to return to. Even though the dream looks perfect, he knows it’s not.
But as an Enneagram 2, as someone who wants to love so deeply that I’d take on others’ suffering, I get it. It’s that temptation to make someone’s pain mine, to save them, to turn their suffering into something I can manage because maybe, just maybe, they’ll love me in return. It’s romantic in the most disturbed way—yeah, but also, it’s human. And it’s real.
In the end, I’d take the suffering from anyone I loved—friends, family, anyone—because I’d do anything for them. And maybe, just maybe, that’s the real power of love: the willingness to carry that pain and still try to make something beautiful out of it. So long as you don’t kill both of you by drowning in love.
