something I think I’ve always understood
by hurricanejessica
When I was very young, I cut out a picture from a magazine of two rams locked in a strange embrace. I hung it in my tiny room.
Their heads were pressed together in an aggressive nuzzle, their faces wild with an extreme passion that even as a child I could somehow identify. Both rams were pushing with equal force, relentlessly striving to keep the connection. I pasted it to my wall because I thought the rams were expressing affection.
It was a battle.
I thought it was love.
A few years later, my brother and father began cultivating their own little freshwater ecosystem in a 50 gallon aquarium. Before the days of the Georgia Aquarium’s awe inspiring displays, my mother would frequently take us to pet stores, some that exclusively sold fish, as something to do in the afternoon to keep us entertained. This kindled in us a desire to keep and care for a few tiny lives of our own. One day, while shopping for new additions to our finned family, I came across a pair of gouramis, more commonly know as “kissing fish.” As a breed, they are quite peculiar, possessing a pair of full lips that look almost comically out of place pursing from the tip of their thin, flat, ovular bodies. These two kissing fish had their lips locked forcefully together and were pushing each other to and fro. Again, I could see creatures that shared an equal passion. Again they were unyielding in their efforts to connect.
“Look, mom!” I exclaimed. “Those fish love each other.”
“Oh, sweetie,” my mother said with an affection made greater by my innocent assumption, “they aren’t kissing. They’re fighting.”
“Fighting?!” I repeated in disbelief. “But that’s not how you fight!”
“Sometimes, fighting and love can look almost the same. Like the rams in your photo.”
Suddenly, at this revelation, something within me cracked and spread.
The rams, the fish, I thought I understood them.
“I thought they loved each other. Both of them. I thought…”
“They very well could. Maybe they’re just fighting. You love me and you certainly do pick your fights with me.”
My mother was just being nice. She was trying to quell my disappointment by providing me with a possible alternative to the simple fact that those pairs of creatures could have hated each other, or felt threatened, or territorial, or even been indifferent to one another and just feeling aggressive.
I asked my mother to buy me a magazine about freshwater fish, and sensing that I might have been disheartened, she obliged.
Later that night, while my mother and father slept, I cut out a picture of a pair of sparring gouramis and tacked it neatly next to my quarreling rams.
Because I liked their passion.
Because I respected their doggedness.
Because, hey, they could be in love.
Sometimes you have to be in love to fight with that kind of ferocity.
