Rainbow Fish

My fish hyperfixation isn’t new.

I recently rediscovered a journal from kindergarten during a closet cleanout. There’s little mention of my booger-eater-era lifestyle, and innumerable entries with oceanic motifs.

A bird named Percy falls off her branch and flies out to sea. My fish wishes to be a princess. And “Rainbow Fish,” the namesake character from the ’90s children’s book, has no friends because he doesn’t share.

The plot of Rainbow Fish goes: Rainbow Fish is the most beautiful fish in the ocean. When an unembellished peer asks for one of his scales and he refuses, Rainbow Fish blackballed and labelled a haughty piece of shit by the greater fish community.

He asks a wise octopus for advice, who tells him to give his scales away to “discover how to be happy.” So he does, and soon every fish has a glittery special scale but Rainbow Fish has only one left. He’s not really Rainbow Fish anymore. He’s just…fish.

The story probably floated to the top of my little brain so often because something about it seemed off. It teaches that Rainbow Fish is wrong for refusing, without asking why he’s refusing. Why is he wrong for refusing?

So the other fish are basic-looking. Whatthefuckever. There’s probably a fish way smarter, one that’s a faster swimmer, another that can blow bubbles in fun shapes. 

Lately I feel a lot like Rainbow Fish. I’m told that if I want to be happy, I should work toward disseminating the parts of myself that people can see and want access to. Refusal seems to lead to being perceived as a haughty, rainbow-scaled cunt. Why am I wrong for refusing?

I think about the tank that sits in the corner of my apartment— the adult manifestation of my childhood hyperfixation. In January, when things were new, it quickly became established. The water cycled, the plants grew, my fish was healthy. It became something I was proud of… for a moment.

Attempting to escape the onslaught of white-girl-in-a-polkadot-outfit-with-neon-accessories/Gen-Z-in-an-all-streetwear-outfit-with-script-tattoos fashion content flooding my algorithm at the time, I was watching a lot of fish stuff. It quickly became overrun with hobbyists adjusting plants with aquascaping tweezers and describing the importance of maintaining water parameters in such detail that it made me feel like I’d done something wrong, having a healthy fish and flourishing plants in a tank I was sticking my unwashed hands into.

It’s rare to go a day without seeing some “I’m incredibly uncomfortable with the conditions I’m forced to accept under capitalism patriarchy colonialism etc etc but I’ll lift myself out of the existential trenches and find happiness by sharing stuff on socials” bullshit, or without being told I need to [insert unsolicited life advice here] by someone who isn’t sitting in my skin.

I’m supposed to be self-aware but not self-involved, autonomous but not difficult, healing but productive, unconventional but digestible, vulnerable but not unstable. I’m tired. Tired of white-knuckling relationships, jobs, and states of being that feel uncomfortable because there’s a “right” way to go about things. 

As a person I’m an unexpected mix of things— culturally, socially, racially. I rarely experience immediate legibility and constantly have to contextualize myself. I’m always bracing myself for someone’s curiosity to turn into “I don’t understand it so I don’t accept it”, or “I don’t understand it so I need to control it”.

I’d like to arrive at a place where I don’t feel obligated to justify my existence because I’m craving connection, or to refuse because I’m so angry I have to refuse to begin with. I know there’s a difference between giving away scales I can regrow and flaying myself alive to be understood.

The ones I have might be prickly and ugly and undesirable at times, at others beautiful and rainbow. I’m working toward remembering I’m the one who gets to decide when, how, and with whom to share them.

It’s going to take a while, but that’s natural. You can’t add living things to a new environment and immediately expect them to thrive. When a fish is added to a tank it needs to acclimatize. The bag needs to float in the water, the temperatures need to adjust. When new plants go in, their leaves melt away before new ones begin to grow. It’s okay if I need more time in the bag. It’s okay if I need to wait for parts of me to die before new ones replace them.

I’m learning to be happy with my scales, my tank, the things I make.

They don’t have to be perfect, finished, or impressive.

Just mine.