For some time now, I’ve been bugging Conor to get fish. I used to have a fighting fish that sat in a jar on my desk and swam around attacking his water heater while I worked. When I went away earlier this year I passed him onto my brother to live with his goldfish and, whilst I’d loved that I’d had him, I didn’t really think any more of him.
Which is sad, considering that for at least half the time I’ve been home he was still with that goldfish, hovering in a tank in my brother’s room feeling (as I’m sure fish do – I’ve seen Finding Nemo) neglected. Or perhaps yearning for the ocean. And I never looked in on him once.
In any case, I missed having fish. For the past month or so I’ve had my heart set on having guppies. They’re small, colourful fish that do nothing much but float around all day, but there’s a certain peaceful feeling inherent in the idea of having a fish tank filled with little fish that sit around looking pretty. And I loved that idea.
So a week or so ago I informed Conor I was getting fish and walked off to our nearest pet store to make my selections. To which he grudgingly tagged along because I pretended he still had some say in the matter.
In the short time we’ve had our six little guppies we’ve killed five of them. We did everything right, but every day or two another would be floating at the top of the tank, and us with no clue what’s going on. It’s persisted through water changes, tank changes, heater temperature changes and removal of the ornamental plant, but it seems that despite everything, a relationship where fish and us live in harmony is just off the cards.
What I’ve found interesting throughout this experience, is that, while I’m sad for my little fish, I’ve reconciled that for whatever reason, having fish just isn’t something that’s on the cards. And as trivial as that seems, it’s important in that I’m letting go.
Recognising something isn’t working is seldom easy. It’s a long path filled with denial and angst and the longer it goes on the more toxic it can become. I know that right now it’s probably very easy to read this and think that I’m obliquely referring to my relationship, writing or general life plans but I promise it’s nothing like that.
Lately I’ve been missing travel. As many of my friends, and the fellow bloggers I follow and admire have been lately experiencing all sorts of amazing adventures, I’ve felt increasingly frustrated as my relative lack of travel and building stress levels of work and uni deadlines have piled up and left me yearning over ideas of what could be but isn’t.
Which is where the fish come back in (I promise I have a point here). Manufactured experiences and ideas of how things should be that build without restraint are weeds that grow and tug at your psyche until it seems that nothing is really good enough and you can never catch a break.
But I realised this morning, as I changed the water for our last remaining guppy, that sometimes that’s all things are – yearnings for an idea, blown far out of proportion. And whilst I had no especially grand plans for my little school of fish, letting go of the idea of fish and liking my tiny survivor for his own sake is the first step to letting things go and living for how things are.
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