My fish died today. His name was Jawes (after one of my favorite bands, Dawes), and he was a beautiful, blue Beta. My luck with fish in the past was less than ideal, but I reached a point in my life a couple years ago when I needed something to take care of. The beeping on my emotional heart monitor was slow and soft, and I needed some metaphorical paddles to come in and jolt me. I needed signs of life. I needed Jawes.
Our first few weeks together were stressful. I got him a tank way bigger than a Beta needed. I wanted room for error, and more space was apparently a plus on the fish survival checklist. I got the chemicals for his tank and joked that I needed a chemistry degree to keep him alive. He started to stress (not good for fish), and I freaked out thinking that my new undertaking would become another loss in my life during a time when I couldn’t afford any more.
I genuinely think I willed that fish to live.
He survived, and I survived. We made it through together. He was a reminder to me that I could do hard things, and as time passed by, I realized how long I’d kept Jawes alive. Our first full year together, I sat in front of his tank and told him that I never thought we’d share that day together. But we made it. And miraculously, we shared another year together, too.
Jawes and I survived a lot together. We shared two and a half years, when I thought it was amazing that we made it to two and a half weeks in the beginning. So when I came home today saw that he had died, I started immediately crying. Then I questioned my crying: “It’s just a fish, Carrie. It’s just a fish.”
But it’s more than a fish. Isn’t it?
He’s a reminder that I survived excruciating things when I didn’t think I could. He’s a symbol and image of life, a heartbeat when mine was unsteady. So his death is painful because he mattered to me. The thing he represented mattered, and still matters, to me. And losing him is a reminder of those excruciating times, but also the resilience I had to get through them.
Sometimes emotions catch us off guard. We react to things, like I did with Jawes, in ways that don’t make sense on the surface. We think “It’s just a _________. Why am I upset about a _________.” When it’s really more than that. If you sit with it long enough, you’ll hopefully begin to see how your reaction makes sense when you look under the surface of it all. You’ll see that it’s not about a fish.
It’s so much more than just a fish.