The Goldfish Monologues

I was literally running for my life — well, running from my problems, which at age sixteen felt pretty much the same. Freshman track tryouts were in a week, and I'd spent every afternoon since New Year's gasping around the neighborhood like a dying asthmatic whale.

"You're overthinking it," Jamie said from her front porch, watching me wheeze past her house for the third time that day. "Just, like, exist in the motion or whatever."

Easy for her to say. Jamie was the kind of naturally graceful person who made everything look effortless — eating papaya at lunch, flirting with seniors, existing. Meanwhile, I was still recovering from accidentally complimenting Mr. Henderson's hair during third period. The memory still made my face burn.

My room was the only place where I didn't feel completely awkward, mostly because of Fin. Fin was my goldfish, and he was genuinely the best listener I knew. I'd spill everything — my anxiety about tryouts, my cluelessness about romance, my fear that everyone would eventually realize I was just — regular. Not special. Not remarkable. Just mid.

"You'd understand, right?" I asked Fin, who swam to the glass and opened his tiny mouth repeatedly. I liked to think he was hyping me up, but my mom said he was just, like, processing oxygen through his gills. Whatever.

The real trouble started when I tried to reinvent myself. Teen magazine said confident people tried exotic things, so I bought a papaya at Whole Foods. Then I spent twenty minutes trying to open it like it was a normal fruit instead of a weird alien orb that refused to be cut. The whole thing was a disaster.

"Why are you assaulting that fruit?" my brother asked, leaning against the doorframe. He held up a water bottle. "Mom said take your vitamin D supplement. Apparently you're always inside now."

"I'm expanding my palate," I insisted, papaya juice everywhere. "Sophisticated people eat papaya."

"Sophisticated people also know how to use a knife," he said, and then, suspiciously: "You okay?"

And maybe I wasn't. Maybe I was just — tired of performing. Of running toward expectations I didn't even understand.

That night, I sat by Fin's tank and finally said it out loud: "I think I'm scared I'm never gonna be anybody."

Fin did a little flip.

And suddenly I was laughing, because my therapist was a goldfish, and that was honestly fine. Maybe you don't start out extraordinary. Maybe you just keep swimming, eating weird fruit, running even when it sucks, and eventually — you become exactly who you're supposed to be.

Or at least, that's what I told myself while I choked down vitamin D supplements and studied track tutorials on YouTube.

Small steps. Even goldfish know that.