My Betta Fish Died

And because I am who I am, my brain turned it into a metaphor of mental illness.

See, I had two of these. A blue one, and a red one. Both with obscure names that I need keys I don't have to spell. So Red and Blue they are.

Red's tank was full of algae. Like FULL. Stick your hand in the water at any point, pull it out, guaranteed one tea spoon of green gross-ness. I had to periodically uproot the plants to even stand a chance at cleaning them. There were snail eggs in the dry food that had the nerve to hatch because I was away for a week and nobody bothered changing the water.

Red didn't seem particularly bothered, but I don't speak fish, and there were no bubble nests to show a particularly good condition, so I worried.

Blue's tank was clean. SO clean, with my depression-impacted memory it was hard to figure out when I had last changed the water. Algae would, in an orderly fashion, clump around itself and fucking stay in one spot. No snails either. I kinda envied blue and wondered what the fuck made two tanks kept in identical condition do such weirdly different things. I remember considering a water transplant to see if Blue was farming some sort of nice bacteria that kept the green invaders in check. Yeah, his fins were melting, but fin rot is a thing that fish can get when they stress out, and Bettas are as prone to that as it gets, so I cleaned the water and didn't think much of it.

One week later, Blue died.

Turns out, he was sick, not stressed, and that virus also fucked up all the algae.

That's it, I don't know how to keep going with the clever anecdote so I'll break it.

Blue and Red were, in my mind, your typical mentally ill versus nerotypical comparison. Red seemed to have a lot more to worry about, but because he was healthy, he didn't really give half a shit. Blue seemed perfectly fine, but wasn't, and that "alright" sentiment was actually a symptom, kind of like depressed people tend to laugh very loud or sleep a lot and make you think they don't have one care in the world.

And I was stupid enough to wish for a healthy fish to live in the conditions that were a manifestation of the other's illness.

Like, has your mom ever compared you to that one friend she thinks is doing a stellar job, but you know they want to die and their life is a mess?

Yeah.

I don't have a clever way to end this.