The Fish that Flew Out of The Tank

Have you ever felt like a lone fish in a huge fish tank, where all your little fish friends have died and their skeletons float slightly above the rocks every time you try to bring them back to life?

You watch the world outside, the light patterns refracting in every surface that is between you and the infinite space of air. You are just a fish, but you know all too well that lights cause illusions and the world is never as it seems.

Sometimes you want to break out of the tank, but the thick glasses separating you from your freedom seem to stretch for miles, that one tiny crack you made months ago by hitting your head first into the glass seems to dissolve if you glance at it from a side angle.

You are alone. You and your dead fish bones. There used to be dreams too. But dreams come from your imaginations, and your imaginations are choosing to float away, one air bubble at a time.

Life outside the fish tank looks beautiful. You can see rainbows and unicorns, and oh look there’s the green field and the sun shining on those pretty pink pansies. You cannot wait to get out. The tiny crack you made months ago now suddenly seems larger. I have to get out. I have to touch the rainbow. One push, two push, a thousand pushes. I shall not give up until I smell those pansies. The crack finally gives in.

You flow outside the fish tank, the amount of water that falls on top of you is enough to make your own little pool, until it starts seeping and soaking down the thick carpet below and you look around to see little wet rainbow pieces and torn pansy pieces making paper islands in the vanishing pool. The air doesn’t seem so fresh anymore, and you flop around hoping that someone will pick you up and lay you down among your fish bones, for you realize that in pursuit of something wild and beautiful, you forgot that you were just a tiny little fish who didn’t know how to breathe out of water.

I’ve Been Thinking

I’ve been thinking. My school is on strike since yesterday, and I have nothing to do. So I’ve been thinking.

I finished reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath yesterday, and I couldn’t help but resonate myself to the character Esther who is depressed and cannot write. I am depressed, but I can write. The only time I cannot write is when I am not depressed, and that makes me question my own creativity.

I would like to think that my ADHD medication is not putting a stop to my creativity. I feel good. I feel organized. My thoughts are still a chaos, but I find myself deflecting them often. I do not have the time to be sad and I do not have time to write.

I like the way that I can collect myself, rationalize my priorities, even make my bed every morning (which I never did before !), but I feel like I’m fighting to write, fighting to let my words flow freely, fighting to compose poetry, fighting to retain the things about me I love the most.

I started to type this up an hour ago, and I’ve barely written 200 words. Two hundred words feel like an infinite stretch to my infinite feelings. I squeeze my thoughts in, between each space of every word I write, but they are just tiny scrawls in invisible ink.

I have so much to say, countless things to express and so many questions. I am watching the light snow fall outside. I can see every single snow flake that melts as soon as it touches the ground because the sun is shining. My thoughts are no different. They are beautiful and sad and cold and blue, and slowly fading away.

For the first time, the sun is shining in my life and I am not sure I like the warmth.