Goldfish Lightning

The vitamin D sat on her counter like a tiny accusation. Three months post-divorce, and she still couldn't maintain basic routines.

Her iPhone buzzed—David again. She'd told him it was over, but he kept texting like she was just experiencing connection issues instead of ending their three-year relationship.

She stared at the goldfish bowl on her windowsill. Bernard, her daughter's parting gift before college. The fish swam in endless circles, its three-second memory somehow both tragic and enviable. Imagine living perpetually in the now, no past to regret, no future to dread.

"You should come over," David's latest message read. "I made that risotto you like."

She deleted it. Some habits were harder to break than others.

That evening, she went swimming at the community center—the one place where her phone couldn't follow. The water was cool and silent, her body weightless. She swam lap after lap, her thoughts finally quieting. Until the lightning struck.

Literally. A storm had rolled in unnoticed, and a bolt hit the pool's transformer. The emergency lights flickered on, casting underwater shadows that danced like underwater auroras. She surfaced to chaos—people scrambling for towels, lifeguards shouting, the air suddenly charged with ozone and panic.

But she kept floating, weightless in the electrified water, and something crystallized in her mind: she'd been mourning not just David, but the version of herself who'd thought love could fix her fundamental loneliness. The person who'd believed that if she just took enough vitamins, texted back fast enough, swam enough laps, she'd become someone who didn't feel so perpetually unsatisfied.

She emerged from the pool, her skin prickling with static and revelation. The goldfish had it right—maybe there was something to living in the present, to swimming in circles because the bowl was all you had, to finding peace in whatever water you currently inhabited.

She walked home in the storm, letting herself get thoroughly soaked, and finally took that vitamin D supplement. Some routines were worth keeping.