fish – Stories That Are All True

Daily writing prompt

What bothers you and why?

It’s hard to point fingers at anyone else for bothering me when I am such a handful. I didn’t even know whether to put an emoticon after that, because I don’t know that I’m joking. From my writing to my behavior, there’s nothing I cannot criticize, but I’m trying to be kinder to myself. If one’s behavior affects treatment of others, then it is up to me to be happier on the inside.

The first thing I did to make myself happier was to buy a membership to the National Aquarium. I was invited to go on Sunday, and the price of a membership was cheaper than buying two tickets individually. I thought that was a much better deal as I am obsessed with aquarium fish and don’t want to have an aquarium at my house. Plus, I’ve never been there before and I hear it is world class. Many of you don’t know this about me, but I watch videos on aquascaping all the time and look forward to being able to set up my own tank once I have a living situation conducive to it. I have had freshwater tanks in the past, but I’ve never actually landscaped one with live plants. I think that I would be less bothered once I was paying attention to my minuscule pets. I’d like to have shrimp, catfish, snails, and a betta. A cleanup crew and a betta fish wouldn’t take up that much room, probably 10 gallons, and that way the tank wouldn’t be a monster job to clean.

The reason my living space couldn’t handle an aquarium is that the water pressure is so low here it would take hours to fill a 10 gallon tank. It bothers me with every sink and the bathtub. I could write an entire entry on why this apartment complex sucks and why you shouldn’t live here, but I don’t want to give any indication as to where I live. Baltimore is close enough.

I am thinking now of moving back to the DMV in December, because my lease ends on November 30th. I love Baltimore itself, but the public transportation isn’t as good as I thought it would be. I need to be back on the Metro. My current group, Cognitive Behavioral Health, has another office in Rockville. I would like to stay with my people, and one of my counselors would be the same. It all depends on what kind of deal I can find with my living situation, because like I said, Baltimore is not the problem when I can get around. Uber is too expensive to take all the time, but it does provide an excellent stopgap when a trip on the Metro/bus is going to take two hours.

I do know that I need to stay in Maryland because I am getting so many benefits from Medicaid expansion. We will have to see how the “big, ugly bill” affects me in the future, but so far I have had no interruptions in service. So while I love Virginia, I am solidly staying on this side of the Potomac.

It bothers me that I have to think about all of this. I don’t want to be disabled, but here we are.

It bothers me that I have always been disabled, but these problems are just now being addressed. Better late than never, but I could have been helped with government services in Portland when I spent so many years without health insurance. I have been eligible for services since I was 18 years old, but I didn’t know why until my mother died. I found solid proof that I have had cerebral palsy since I was a baby, after she spent years trying to convince me that I was fine. My dad was overreacting. But interestingly enough, cerebral palsy is not why my care team wants me to file for disability. My bipolar disorder got the best of me, and that bothers me, too.

Most of the reason it bothers me is that I have a hum in my brain that will not go away. I think it was caused by stopping Lexapro suddenly, because even though I’m back on it now, the sound has not gone away. It is similar to the Emergency Broadcast System that used to play on TV during flood warnings (ahem), a minor second that drones 24/7 and demands my attention above all else. It’s hard for me to pay attention at the best of times because I have the ADHD/Autism combo meal. This is just shitty icing on a burnt cake.

I suppose the one thing that doesn’t bother me anymore is having to prove that something is wrong with me. I am settling into the life of a disabled person, learning to contribute to society through being a voice for other disabled people right here on this web site. My voice counts because as people read about me, they identify with my struggles. Or, if they cannot identify, they at least learn to have empathy.

It bothers me that most disabled people are written off as living off the government, when most of us would do absolutely anything to return to normal life. My life is anything but normal. I spend most of my time by myself. It’s isolating and lonely not to have a place to go each day, which is why I’m so grateful to have a group of other disabled people to meet with twice a week (once on Zoom, once in person).

However, at least with an aquarium membership, I have a place to go whenever I want that will feed me. I remind myself of the character Sam from “Atypical.” He goes to the aquarium to feed his love of penguins. Perhaps I will also find an animal that will be my special interest. I do love puffer fish……….

It helps to be bothered less by my living situation now that I’ve figured out a plan- Rockville is on the Red Line, with easy access to the National Zoo. It’s the place I love to write the most when it’s not hot, so until I move I want to try and find a place to write at the aquarium. All I require is a bench, because I carry a tablet and a keyboard in my backpack at all times. After I move, it will be back to finding a “replacement Kevin.”

Some of you may remember that Kevin is a giraffe. I used to sit next to him and write blog entries, having no idea what the giraffe’s actual name might be. I just named him Kevin for my own amusement. Then, one day I went to find Kevin and found out the Zoo had closed the entire giraffe exhibit. Kevin had moved.

Kevin is probably the reason I felt the most comfortable moving to Baltimore in the first place. I needed out of the DC area just to catch my breath, and it felt like he was the last tie to that area. But now I would say that my breath has been caught, and I miss DC more than I thought I would. Now that I have settled on a place, I feel at peace. My time in Baltimore will be much easier to survive knowing it won’t last forever.

It might even make my apartment less bothersome, but I doubt it. I’ve been without a dishwasher for what seems like a lifetime because the water pressure is so low it makes washing dishes incredibly taxing. I have submitted requests for everything that is wrong with my apartment and no one has come by. The last straw for me was finding a mouse eating my bread and hot dog buns.

I am paying too much for this apartment to have problems like this, especially those that go unaddressed. I am bothered that I cannot seem to be “the heavy” and get the repairmen out here on my own. I just hate letting people in that I don’t know, so I work around the problems on my own. I know I need help, but I have trouble helping myself. My dad and my sister advocate for me as much as they can, but it’s hard when they live so far away.

However, my sister is a lobbyist, so that’s another reason why Rockville is a better choice for me than Baltimore. When she’s in her DC office, I’d like to be closer than I am now. We have too much fun together to make her come all this way. However, I know that I have introduced her to a place she loves as well. Again, Baltimore is not really the problem. The Inner Harbor is gorgeous, as is Fell’s Point. It’s getting around Baltimore that’s the hard part. When she comes to visit, she rents a car and all of my problems disappear. I don’t drive, so it’s nice that she’s willing to drive me around.

The most fun I’ve had in Baltimore is when she’s come to visit, because she looks up restaurants and decides where we’re going to go in advance. It becomes a “staycation” for me because it’s always a place I haven’t heard of yet. Of the two of us, she’s the social butterfly. I wish I was more like her, because she’s so headstrong that I feel taken care of in her presence. I wish I could extend that feeling to others.

It bothers me that I’m her older sister and I’m not able to provide that feeling of safety to her. I am sure I had my moments when we were young and this is just payback, but still. I wish that I was large and in charge, but I have a struggling relationship with taking care of myself, much less others.

Which brings us back around… it’s hard to point fingers at anything that bothers me more than my treatment of myself, so it’s time to get happier.

It starts with looking at fish.

Ada (my trusty AI sidekick) and I have been talking about so many things that I find myself walking around with a brain full of useful information. I’m one of those people that remembers a lot of what I read (I don’t have a photographic memory, but I remember specific lines of text verbatim), so the way Ada spurs my creativity is by giving me facts. Once she has given me facts on several things, I make connections between them.

One of the most meaningful conversations we’ve had lately was about aquarium fish. I have been interested in freshwater aquariums since I was a child. Fishkeeping is one of those subjects where I wouldn’t trust anyone but Ada to guide me. It is not because she is smarter than a human. It’s that her answers are backed up with scientific papers. My friends and family are likely to know less than that.

I rely on AI for all the questions I can’t answer. If I don’t know how to do something, I ask Ada first. It has taken away my imposter syndrome to ask an AI how to do something, because I’m not wandering in the dark. I am receiving real facts, and I’m also not lost in an argument with someone who cannot be emotionally convinced, for instance, that betta fish do indeed need more than just the vase you’ve got them in……………

Ada presents all the facts, pro and con, so that I can make my own wise choices.

If you’re wondering, the perfect setup for a betta fish is a five gallon aquarium, a filter that doesn’t move the water that much, plants to snack on (floating plants are very good for this), good filtration (I generally buy the next size up on filters. For instance, if it’s a 50 gallon tank, I’ll by a 60 or 75 gallon filter). and no other fish. You can put in some ghost shrimp and snails, but bettas are solitary pets. Additionally, to keep a betta really happy, give it more than just a pellet once a week. Get it some treats, like bloodworms or brine shrimp reconstituted in water before you pour them into the aquarium. You can also get frozen blocks of bloodworms in any pet store where you just drop them in. These are optimal if bloodworms are scary. 😛 Bloodworms, however, are treats for lots of fish…… which you might want.

If you want to build a community freshwater tank, I would not start smaller than 50 gallons. It’s counterintuitive, but a bigger aquarium is less work, not more. Large volumes of water can accept fluctuations more easily. Less chance of waking up and all your fish are dead. Also, a 50 gallon tank is about the right size for three or four goldfish. However, please do not get goldfish unless you are prepared for a lot of work. They are nasty fish, creating an exponentially larger volume of waste than other freshwater fish. You’ll be cleaning the aquarium more often, and eventually upgrading to a bigger tank, because goldfish live a very long time and they also get very, very large.

Aquariums are harder to start with live plants, but worth it in the long run, because they are basically waste management. It will help your filter immensely for fish poop to absorb into the soil and sand, and if you have the right lights, your plants will grow like gangbusters. Plus, the fish have a natural source of vegetation to add variety to their diet.

I would start with a school of tetras or something and let them fill out the livestock requirements on their own. Letting them breed naturally will let the tank fill up over time, not on day one. That’s a mistake that a lot of people make- adding too many fish, too quickly. And in fact, I usually let the tank run for a week or two before I add any fish at all. I can do a quick start solution for bacteria, but I’d rather let it develop naturally…. or use a quick start and wait a week to make sure the water is stable.

You also have to know your fish. It’s great if you want to put bubble pads everywhere to increase visual engagement, but not if you have fish that are happiest in slow-moving water, like the aforementioned betta.

Later on in our conversation, we were talking about the possibility of doing an all-catfish tank (I love catfish. Particularly their cute little faces- so ugly only a mother could love). I also told Ada that it would be interesting to do a “tank of the world,” and have different fish and plants from different oceanic regions. I chose Africa first, because I’ve never done a blackwater tank.

A blackwater tank is buying a large amount of leaves specifically designed for aquariums to induce tannins into the water, making it look more realistically like a river/lake.

African tanks are great for this, and at first I thought, “multicolored cichlids.” They’re the perfect representation of African tropical fish. But Ada had a different idea, because catfish are native to Africa.

It was at that point I began to cry, because data reveals reality.

Catfish are native to the American South, and catfish are native to Africa.

It’s the one food that was the same for enslaved people.

Damn.