It all started at a birthday party. I was maybe 10 or 11 or whatever age a child is supposed to be in the sixth grade. It was one of my best friend’s parties, Irina Yusfina. She and her mom had set up an extensive set of games to be performed over the next day and night. The prize? A beta fish. An actual live beta fish. Winners got Popsicle sticks at the end of each game and the girl at the end of the weekend with the most sticks won the fish. I saw those waving plumes, those beautiful blue and purple fins and I knew that I had to have it. I will admit, shamefully, that over the course of the weekend slumber party, I cheated. In an instance of luck I went into Irina’s kitchen and found three abandoned Popsicle sticks and with not nearly enough hesitation, I snatched them, stowing them in my own stack. At the end of the weekend we each counted our winnings and it was determined that the beta was all mine. Looking back I don’t really understand why Irina’s mom didn’t count up the sticks and realize that there were more sticks than were games. Things would be very different now if that had been the case.
I named my prize beta Comet. He didn’t really look like a comet since I suppose comets are a bright white, but he was the color of outer space, a mix of the deepest jewel tones, but in my ten year old imagination I decided that Comet was a perfect fit. My father was so excited when he picked me up from the party, a little jar with a little fish inside clenched protectively to my chest.
Over the next several months my father took me and my younger sister to the local pet supply store where we picked out a slightly bigger tank, decorations, filters, and all the other equipment that you need to keep a fish alive inside your house. I cleaned out Comet’s tank once a week and fed him every day. My parents were so proud of how responsible I was that my father decided to treat me and my sister. We came home from school one day in the fall of that year and upstairs sitting on the small row of lower cabinets where my parents kept all the linens, where two new fish tanks that were far bigger than the small two and a half gallon tank that Comet currently resided in. Little did I know at the time that this was not so much a reward for my hard work but the beginning of an obsession.
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Obsessive Compulsive Disorder shows its face in many different ways and varies depending on the person. My father stopped hugging me shortly after my sister was born. I was three years old and suddenly my once loving and patient father was recoiling at my touch. It happened literally overnight, as if a switch had been flipped. The showers were endless and he would wash his hands up to mid-bicep until his knuckles would bleed. Any time I would pass by his special recliner he would tell me to wash my hands whether I had actually come in contact with him or not. He would compulsively repeat my mother’s name under his breath, “Debbie, Debbie, Debbie,” short and pained, his expression tortured as he didn’t want to say it, but his mind wouldn’t let him stop.
I didn’t realize when I brought home Comet that it would give my father an excuse, an outlet, for all of these obsessive compulsive behaviors. He had started medication a few years before and it helped a little bit, the chanting had stopped and the showers were down to about an hour. The fish gave him an outlet. Soon enough both of these new twenty gallon tanks were fitted with the best accessories and stocked with brightly colored fish. He would sit and watch them, still cringing as I walked by, but never cringing when he would have to reach a hand down and pull out a wad of algae or a dead fish.
Soon these two fish tanks were not enough. There was a fifty gallon bow-front tank that he stocked with saltwater fish. They all died in a freak heater accident and so he moved on to the idea of building a one hundred fifty gallon tank into the wall of our living room. It took three years for him to complete that project in which we lived in a constant state of construction.
One day he came home from work late. In the back of his truck was a broken seventy five-gallon tank that he had bought off of some guy on the internet. My mother was furious. She is a housekeeper and the shoes she wore to work were falling apart. It pained all the joints in her body to walk on those rags. I remember the tears streaming down her face because he had spent the money she had set aside for new shoes. She never bought things for herself and now the one time she needed something, he had taken it away from her without so much as an apology.
When I was in early college, suddenly his prized tank built flawlessly into the wall of our living room was no longer enough. He decided that the next logical progression of his “hobby” was to dig out the crawl space, build a steel and concrete foundation and install a one thousand-gallon, salt water tank. According to him it would be a tank so large that in order to clean it, he would have to fully submerge himself in the water. The light in his eye was shining and brilliant as he drew up the plans and for a while, the compulsions stopped nearly altogether. This glisten of my old father only lasted a few months. Soon he was spending huge amounts of money on plexiglass for the front of the tank, steel girders to bury deep within the earth of the crawl space, and “customizing” the electrical systems throughout the house in order to support this ocean in our basement. My sister and I frequently joke that my parents are never going to be able to sell their house. We laugh, but it’s not funny. My parents are under the impression that the house is their retirement.
I don’t live there anymore and haven’t for years, but the OCD is never far from my mind. Logically I know that his condition is genetic. His brother has it, his mother had it. I get an unpleasant swooping feeling in my chest whenever I engage in repetitive or compulsive behaviors and I often wonder if I will even feel it as I tip over the edge. I see hope in my father though. He only washes his hands up to the forearm and sometimes I can get him to hug me, although he only reaches out with his arms, his chest and torso never getting close enough for a true embrace. My mother still wants for things that she can’t have because he has spent the money. The tank is still not finished. My friends call our basement the Disturbia basement because of the dug-out crawlspace. The guilt is real. There are moments, when he is deeply enthralled with his “hobby,” that I look around at the chaos surrounding my mother and I can’t help but blame myself. I cheated at some silly party games so I could win a fish. My dishonesty caused this momentous shift in our lives. It’s in these moments that I think to myself: if only I had never brought Comet home.
