creatures of fear

an ode to pufferfish <3

He says “back when you were crazy”, referring to my childhood. He doesn’t mean it as an insult. I don’t take it as one. Maybe I do, a little.

I wasn’t mentally well for a lot of my childhood, so I get what he means, I do. I used to feel insecure when I told my therapist I felt crazy, because crazy is a word I try not to use in my daily life, with all its histories and connotations. She, who also has OCD, pushed back: it’s such a specific feeling you’re referring to that the OCD creates within you, to feel crazy. But maybe only I can say it about me.

But I try to be gracious, language can be messy, and not to mention we had just spent a long day at the aquarium—experiencing the type of unexpected fatigue that comes with the hidden hike of hours wandering next to huge walls of fish that look prehistoric, their mouths permanently open to reveal their giant underbites, through rooms full of kids yelling and pointing out all the Dory’s and Nemo’s they can find, of dark rooms with a promise of bioluminescence that typically isn’t kept.

And staring at the pufferfish, of course. Looking at that soft smile, plastered and frozen yet authentic nonetheless, of those chubby cheeks and tiny, rapid fins determined to swim through. Here, I say to the puffer, follow my finger if you’d like, and he does. We smile at each other, mine more a choice than his but I just know he means it, and we hold each other, even if through glass on my end and water on his, we are communing, him and I. In the silence of our voices but the whirring of the tank filters.

I’ve never seen a pufferfish all blown up in real life and I’d love to keep it that way. I’m not interested in your survival mode, I don’t care for the spectacle of your fear. I’m interested in your face, how your eyes exhibit joy in a way I haven’t seen on another fish. I’m interested in your art, yes, this little fish is an artist! How your mating ritual consists of a sand sculpture that takes you a week to make, using your fins, your breath, your precious time in your short, fleeting life to create a geometric masterpiece, waves of sand rushing behind you as your curve, carve, create. Picking up shells and pebbles with your mouth to adorn your creation, to accessorize it, perfect it.

One day after you’re gone, some salesperson will try to preserve your body, inflated. Always inflated, scared. They’ll dry you out, maybe even attach you to a string, suspended from the ceiling. They want you for a souvenir shop, they always do. It’s a thing for tourists, really. For people who don’t know you any way other than the cartoons they’ve watched, the paintings they’ve seen. You’re only ever captured like this, really. The salespeople will say, “Look at their spikes, all their sharp edges scattered everywhere”. They’ll call you a creature of fear, tell the humans to display you on a shelf. What they won’t say, what they mean, is: keep him in your home, so you can view yourself as a braver creature. You don’t know fear like theirs, or rather you don’t show fear like theirs, therefore to be human is to be something stronger.

They may remember you all wrong: for your spikes and your edges as a replacement for their own, but not me. Never me! I’ll remember those sculptures, those tiny fins carrying you the distance, and those soft, chubby cheeks. And I’ll always, always remember your smile.

---

Thanks for reading!!! Now, please enjoy some media of me specialinterestmaxxing!!!! You must watch the video of the white spotted pufferfish creating its sand sculptures it’s the best ever: white spotted puffer creating its sand sculpture

met a puffer who changed my life at the aquarium of the pacific in 2017 :')

also when i found out my aquarium of the pacific puffer was FAMOUS!

visiting him in 2021 :’) it’s hard to tell but he grew SO MUCH he was so big!!!!