hex_m_hell

CW: death, mention of self-harm, family violence.

I don't notice at first, among the algae growing on the glass, the dulling but still gaudy plastic plants, the real plant held in place by fishing line, fuzzy with growth, haphazardly connecting objects in the tank. What ancient cobwebs weave through this water, what threads bind this mess together? Crouching down, the turbulence of the surface becomes visible. Stuck within it, pinned in an area near the back of the tank, it floats. Dead, on its side, even in the context of the obvious neglect it still comes as a bit of a shock.

Five day intensive PTSD treatment. No phone, no computer, no contact with the outside world. Only this notebook, some books I brought, four other people… and these fish. What have I come to?

So many other fish, alive I mean, swimming in a cluster in the corner, living tiny lives of avoidance as though everything could be normal if they could only ignore it. I had only seen one or two at first, orange silk tails gently flowing then flickering, little gray bodies bobbing and darting, before I crouched down to see it. What changes can come from a slight shift in perspective?

Gray and putrefying, the corpse floats, unrecognizable from decay. I move close to the tank and look around the side.

“They look so cute,” another patient says. She can't see it from where she's sitting. You have to get down and look at it close.

I wonder if the filter is broken, or perhaps there isn't enough air in the water of this tank. Is that why so many are so close to the surface? I don't see any bubbles, the only aeration must be coming from the turbulence that holds that dead fish in its grasp.

Did it die from ammonia? An overpopulated tank overwhelms filter capacity, dead fish, like this one, then release more ammonia as they rot, could lead to a feedback loop of death and decay. How long until they are all dead? How long until cascading failure and collapse? One untreated problem can magnify.

I don't remember most of my childhood. I don't usually try. A man hung himself in our kitchen with an electrical wire, so I am told by my mother as we drive by our old house. It was my grandmother's house before we moved in. My parents had been remodeling before they split up and had to sell the house. They had been remodeling as long as I could remember. The young couple who bought it was excited to finish it, but this man's girlfriend had found him dead one morning, as though some curse hung over the place. I looked up at my mother, struggling to comprehend the situation with the faculties of a six year old boy.

The house was across the street from the elementary I had gone to, before we had to sell the house. I would walk to school on my own, across the street, with my parents watching me from the window or the yard to make sure I was being safe.

There was a little farm in the back. My parents were “back to the land” types. I remember playing with my neighbor while my mom and her canned jar after jar of something or other. I remember climbing through the goat pen and climbing up the huge dead tree in the back. You could see the whole neighborhood from the upper branches. I told my parents once, and they cut it down. I remember running through grass (a bit taller than me) pretending to be an explorer in a jungle. I remember sitting in the tall grass and hearing a rustling, thinking it was a snake and screaming for help, saved by the elderly neighbor from the gopher digging nearby.

I always got in trouble for chasing the chickens. I remember the rooster's spurs digging into my back, ripping my favorite black shirt with a yellow T-Rex on the front, crying in pain as it slashed at me.

I remember the muffled yelling and fighting. I remember my mother kicking me, much later, almost a teenager by then, and my dad filing a police report. They did nothing.

I seem fine most of the time. There are a few oddities, but those are the usual eccentricities of an autodidact in a high level professional role.

The decay is invisible without close examination. I have mastered masking without even knowing it, the skill of masking neuroatypicality is fungible, so it seems: skilled at masking difference from others, I hid the signs of collapse even from myself.

I chat casually with the other patients. No one notices the death, the possibility of imminent collapse. I have learned that there are things people don't want to see, and I have learned how to hide them in myself. How much easier is it to hide suffering when you have already learned to hide difference.

I go back to my room to sleep, and wake up at 4:30 with these words floating in my head.