I've had my fish Picasso for a little over three years now. That's officially longer than any boy I've ever been romantically attached to.
My fish is very consistent, very predictable in his behaviour and for as utterly ridiculous as it may sound, I love him and I believe if fish are capable of love, he loves me too.
We tend to have the same sleep schedule, which means I should have been asleep 2 hours ago. It's 2:45 in the morning. Fortunately I don't have to work until later in the afternoon. Regardless, I can't sleep. Because I'm worried about my fish. I've been worried about him for weeks now and I don't know if he's getting better.
I can tell his mood by the way he swims, the color of his scales (blue = happy, red = sad) and I can generally tell when he's sleeping. However, he's been sleeping at the top of his bowl lately and I'm terrified I'm going to wake up one of these mornings and find him dead.
Which might not sound like much of a big deal to many people because "he's just a fish" but I talk to him on a regular basis and even as I type this, there is a lipstick print on his fishbowl from where he swims up to get kisses from me. I'm sure on some level, I've entirely redefined "pathetic" but to hell with it.
I've been giving him his special medicine for a week but the water seems suddenly very cloudy today. According to the medicine instructions, I'm scheduled to change his water out tomorrow anyway and then settle into "the waiting game" to see if his fins will grow back or if time will finally take its toll.
I feel like the most humiliatingly childish excuse of a pathetic loser because, while most girls my age are dragging themselves home from bars and sorting through piles of phone numbers from hot guys, I'm at home in fuzzy monkey print pajama pants and a hoodie whispering to a fishbowl and crying because his tail fin drags when he swims and right now he only has use of his two, very small side fins and I wonder if there's something I did to cause him to get sick andhave his fins start to atrophy and more than anything, I wonder if he's in pain.
Maybe he doesn't care because he's a fish. Maybe he can't even feel pain and this is all a waste of flustered emotions.
Just 3 degrees farenheit in either direction is enough to kill him. I worry about the current weather and our nighttime lows, I worry about how much my electric bill will be when it finally arrives because we had a record freezing winter and I turned my heater on not to save me but my fish. I know it's pathetic, but I live alone and I need SOMETHING to love. Some reason to say "It actually matters if I don't come home tonight."
I woke him up and he swam aroudn for about 5 minutes and now he's back in the same spot as before.
And I just realized... he's looking at me. maybe he's sleepy.
Maybe /he/ can't sleep because he can tell I'M upset and he's worried about me too...?
When we moved to Olympia 2 years ago, he was really mad at me for about a week and a half until I put up a picture of the captiol building so he oculd see where I worked.
He's looking *right* at me right now.
I don't want to go to sleep because I have this horrible feelinghe might die.
But if he's waiting for me to fall asleep so he can go peacefully, maybe I'm just making things harder.
There's something different about his eyes. They aren't focusing on anything and they're a different color and holy crap almighty! Who the HELL stays up all ngiht blogging online about their FISH?
I'm such a loser.
I should probably just go to bed. I've already said my good-byes to him several times this week. But tonight, I'm especially scared to sleep. Maybe I've been to too many funerals and I'm paranoid about death.
Or maybe I know it so well that I can see it coming...
*sigh*
you're a loser, beck. this is why you're not married. you're in love with a fish...
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