A story about fish and a guide to the new year

love and loss and growing pains

My father loves to spearfish off the small beach in Rhode Island where we spend two weeks together each summer. Since I was a baby, I’d wait on the shore for him to bring in his catch onto the beach. On his hip he’d tote in these sleek black-scaled fish called “tautog” that had funny crooked teeth from eating mussels, and every summer I’d try to save those damn fish with holes in their soft grey bellies. I’d dig a ditch and fill it with water for them - a sort of baptism of hope and naive. I was a hopeful thing then and I am a hopeful thing now as I seep through myself and into the world around me, because 2024 gutted me like a fish.

It held me sweetly as it split me from my pelvis to my gills and it kept its pound of flesh. It stuffed me with glitter and cotton and anger I’m still not sure what to do with. But, it was so gloriously beautiful too, and I think that is just what it was meant to be. A reminder that life is glorious and magical and awful and that is the point.

I went through an earth-shattering breakup towards the end of September that I am still trying to heal from. I didn’t want it to end, but I was in a lot of pain trying to juggle a beautiful love that held me and a loneliness that could swallow me whole. It quickly made me both the slain fish and the little girl desperately digging the ditch for water. Some days I scoop the sand quickly enough and I can breathe, and some days I turn rotten in the sun. I still find pieces of this person everyday tucked away in my crevices that I pull out and hold to the light. I admire them while also dry-heaving and wailing to my mother (I’m 27 btw). It’s wondrous and weird!

See, the thing about being gutted is you also sort of feel…clean? You suddenly have all this room, you have nothing to sort out anymore. It’s all out in front of you on your bedroom floor and you can see what is yours and what never was. It’s refreshing and absolutely disturbing at the same time. There’s been times I’ve tried to scoop all of me up and shove myself back into myself because it all felt so wrong. I was terrified of what I’d be without all this pain and love and memory that melded to my insides (and honestly I still very much am). I wasn’t ready yet to walk around as someone else with different guts and a different heart. What if I didn’t like her? What if she ruins everything? What if I will never love correctly again and I will die alone in my pink floral childhood bedroom! But, your body shifts. It is suddenly too small to hold what you’ve become. What goes out cannot go back in.

That is a growing pain. A kick in your ass that says “she can’t help you anymore”. She being me from the age of 23 to 27. I had to make peace with the fact that I was just creature that was destined to be stripped and eaten alive by the things she loves.

Now that is the real food chain (one I will never be at the top of because I’ve accepted I am just too soft for the carnage). I think one day I will be able to write more about my aching with you all, but it still feels like a scab I shouldn’t pick at yet.

Anyway, enough about fish and guts - here is my short (but hopeful) guide for the new year. I wanted to provide some comfort for you if maybe you’re going through the same heartache, or 2024 just left you feeling a bit emptier than usual. These are tiny reminders to help you give you a boost and some things to take note of. For the gutted. For the full. For the lost. For the found.

1. Buy something 15 year old you would have loved. You have to forgive them for not being the softest thing.

   

2. Accept that sometimes you are the fire and sometimes you are the flood. You will burn all the way down. You will soak yourself to the bone in the name of love. It is the only way.

   

3. Let yourself crack and splinter so something good can grow through you. Mourn what the year could have been. Sob into a pink pillow and then let go. Know nothing truly good will ever be pretty. Smile at that.

4. Be uncomfortable more often. Wear the skin of something bigger and louder until it fits you better.

   

5. Let people disappoint you, let them be mean and wild and loving and muddy. Allowing others to exist is a great type of freedom. Wade through them like water. Thank them for the reminder that life is both beautiful and terrible. Do not buy goggles to try and see them clearly. Do not try to stay and float.

6. Worry less about your nose and thighs and lips. Count your fingers each morning and then think about the last time you held someone’s hand and didn’t sweat. Practice being held. Being seen.

   

7. Start now. Make a mess. Start again. Wail. Doubt. Have a god-complex on a Sunday. To fail is far more interesting! Now you have a story instead of a perfect creation you can’t even speak to.

I hope you liked this short little read - I felt nice to be a little raw and a bit of a cry baby. 2025 will be a lot kinder to us! I know it!

Much love,

Isabella