An Ocean Apart

I decided to visit the aquarium today. There’s nobody here but me. I don’t have many friends, and the friends I do have were either working, in class, or simply too busy to show up. But that’s okay—I like being alone sometimes. It gives me time to think; a space to breathe.

I’m admiring a school of Tetras when my phone goes off, vibrating softly in my pocket. I almost don’t look. Almost. My fingers buffer above my pocket, weighing the pros and cons. Then, my body decides for me and my hand dives in. I unlock my phone and check my Messenger app.

He sent me a picture of his school setting off fireworks. In the photo there’s a huge group of students pushed up against a multi-storied window, watching the white, smoky burst of a firework. Beneath it, he texted me: This is the fanciest college event I’ve ever been to. I text him that it looks cool, and I am happy for him. But I’m also thinking about how I sat at my desk most of today avoiding having a shower because I didn’t want to see myself in the mirror, how I had enough anxiety earlier to give me a stomach ache. Most of my days are guided by these simple notions: drag myself out of bed, eat something so I don’t feel sick in a couple minutes (even though I’m not hungry), distract myself from intrusive thoughts by watching some mind-numbing show or Youtube video, eat again, drag myself to bed, toss and turn all night only to wake up exhausted, repeat. Sometimes it feels like a chore to be alive, to open my eyes and simply exist. And he gets to send me these snapshots of his life; unburdened, stable, wealthy, promising. I watch him laugh so hard he can’t breathe on video chat with his friends from school, and even as my heart frowns, I smile along with him, because I know it’s the right thing to do. It would be different if I were a part of those pictures. If I were woven somewhere into the snapshots, laughing along with him.

Instead I’m here, mulling over our last fight or argument, fending off the hunger pains of our previous ones. I think about him swearing, yelling and hitting himself while I sat there silently, afraid to speak further. I think about all the things he called himself: a selfish, awful, terrible boyfriend when I tried to talk to him about what was bothering me. Mom says I’m being manipulated and she’s worried about me. She keeps walking in on us during fights, then crouching next to me, caressing my back or my arm and begging me to tell her what’s wrong. I tell her it’s nothing, that I don’t want to talk, and it’s my fault I’m crying anyway. I just cry, I tell her. That’s it.

She doesn’t get it. We fight because of me, because I obsess over things, because I can’t let go of the past. Because I’m a selfish and ungrateful person. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. And I believe it, whenever I bring up something to him, whenever we argue. But then there's times like right now when he’s not here. Left alone to my thoughts, I’m just sad. Deeply, cripplingly sad. I love Cassian, I love him to the teeth. I want to wrap him in a blanket of my love and kiss him goodnight on the forehead with my love. I want to make him bento-style lunch boxes and send him off to work with my love. I want him to wear our love like a suit of battle-armour; an iron chestplate that makes him invincible. But when I look down at my own chest, at my own naked-white arms, I don’t find any armour. Instead, I look down at myself and feel empty, like a vacant samurai suit in a museum, my flesh having died a long time ago. My body is no longer something a firework would resonate in.

I watch the fish weave around one another, shimmering like coins, and a memory surfaces: once, when I was a little girl, I had a goldfish named Henry. My friend overfed it during my birthday party, and it died the next day. We dug a grave for it in our backyard, and during the memorial, I asked my mom if Henry suffered. Mom revealed to me that goldfish have extremely short-term memory, and Henry would have forgotten about all the bad things that happened to him before he died. Relieved, I wrapped Henry in a napkin and fed him to the earth, where he could be at peace.

Now, I want nothing more than to be like Henry. I think about the bliss these fish must feel, suspended in the moment, perpetually unburdened. It makes me want to jump into the tank. I don’t want to remember Cassian breaking a wooden spoon over his knee. I don’t want to remember when he threw a pot of boiling hot water everywhere, when he told that other girl she was cute, when he told me I was annoying. I can’t stop thinking about what he did with her, and it’s ripping me open from the inside. Long-distance relationships are hard, but they’re not supposed to be this hard, right? I’m working to afford to move there to be with him, to close the miles between us. But in that moment, when he was with her, the miles between us were the only thing that mattered.

My hands curl into fists. These fish are so lucky, and they don’t even know it. I would give anything to have the power to forget.

The screen of my phone lights up as it buzzes again. I glimpse the message he sent me, my heart dropping involuntarily into my stomach: I miss you.

I miss you.

I start to type it back, but then I realize it’s not true. I don’t miss him. I miss who I used to be.

The speaker announces in a spur of static that the aquarium will be closing soon. I watch the fish circle their tank, eating bubbles and mindlessly defecating. The phone vibrates in my palm—he’s calling me.

I throw my phone into the tank. My ringtone is swallowed by a vacuum of water, and my phone sinks to the bottom, flickering to darkness. Briefly, I wonder if I've made a mistake. But then I hear a low whistle, climbing in pitch and in height.

I turn to face the window just in time to see the firework. The guy standing next to me smiles and bumps my elbow. "Happy New Years!"