Fountain Algae

Nothing's wrong. Nothing. Seriously. Despite myself, here I am, breaking down in front of the waitress at Kaha Sushi.

I don’t even know exactly why I’m crying. I don’t know what goes wrong in my brain. Every day, a dopamine chemical spill drips from my brain, and I stare at it in agony to pick it up, but it’s too far for my short arms to reach.

What if I had longer metaphorical arms? What if I could take a clean tissue from the box that runs out so fast, pick up the dopamine, and wring the chemical back onto my brain? What if there was a “release dopamine” button in my brain I could press anytime?

I tell the waitress that I need a minute and run towards the patio fountain. I stare at its soul for a while. I wish I was just a little thing of algae instead of a human. Algae live in water and just exist there. It’s so much easier for them. They’re not even conscious.

The fountain unblurs a picture in my mind. We were ten years old. My brother and I would fight over all the little pennies and quarters in the water, and Dad would yell at us because homeless people needed that money.

Today, ten years later, there’s more algae in the fountain than coins. The world has stopped believing in magic. Maybe if we believed a little harder and showed the sky that we believed in magic by throwing those little coins in the greenish water…maybe there would somehow be more magic in the world.

It’s absurd. It’s just a cliché deep thought, like the deep monologues characters always perform at the end of sentimental scenes in movies. But I’m in a deep thought cycle, and my brain can’t stop.

The fountain brings back more memories.

My brother and I had a toy bear. It wasn’t exactly a teddy bear. It was this green rubbery bear-shaped squish toy. Like a gummy bear but not edible. After a long argument about whether it was a boy or girl bear and deciding it was a boy because he was green, we named him Gumi. No matter what we did with him, he just shifted back to his smiling little bear shape.

He had impressively thick skin for a toy bear. Thicker skin than I have today. I remember sticking a sharpened pencil in him, and he didn’t pop or break. He just moved back into his original shape. Little sound waves we can’t even feel make it through my skin. I wish I was as strong as Gumi. I’m jealous of a damn toy bear. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Hah. He was truly indestructible. He didn’t have bones to break or eardrums to send mean sound waves to. He just…existed to be squished and loved with no pressure to love back or do anything. And he was always smiling with no effort at all.

I stare at my green reflection in the water.

When you really, really think about it, isn’t that beautiful? The mere fact that you can see a green version of yourself by looking down into algae water? It’s so simple, so raw…I can't really explain it. I don't get why I act more fascinated by the changing of pixel colors on little screens.

By instinct, I take my phone out and check Instagram. Am I technically addicted to depression? Why do we naturally get addicted to depressing pixels arranged in a way to fake-please us? Why can’t I be addicted to organic salad and touching grass? Why can’t happy chemicals just spawn at the right time and make me happy? It’s a stupid wish, but…what if we never had to feel sad about anything?

It’s a thought so deep that it’s shallow. We all want it. They say it’d be boring to have no problems, but I’m wishing for more than that. Genuine happiness until the end. What could be boring about that?

Maybe it’s okay. Maybe I can dissolve into my breaths and gaslight myself into thinking everything is perfect. If I was chronically introverted, loneliness wouldn’t hurt. Self-gaslighting is underrated. I could just manipulate myself into feeling anything I wanted to feel. Maybe somehow hallucinate a fake boyfriend. A perfect life. Insanity is underrated.

The other people on the patio stare at me, too polite to ask why I’m having a staring contest with water and feeding tears to the algae.

A little boy from one of the tables comes up to me and asks me to grab his drowning gummy bear that fell in the fountain. His mom says it’s littering, but the bear is too far for his little arm to reach.

It’s green.

Green apple flavor, maybe. Or lime. Or watermelon. Or just…green. I find myself squeezing it a little with my fingers.

It suddenly starts raining, making this cliché scene more cliché. The algae water gets diluted and falls out of the fountain. It can just…be there one moment and be gone the next. I blink slowly at it like life is dramatically changing everywhere, but it’s just some rain during an existential crisis.

There are eight billion people in this world. At any given time, at least one person is actively having an existential crisis.

The little boy stares back up at me. I silently give it back to him. His mom stares at me and offers a tissue. I’m too lost to acknowledge her, and by the time I force myself back to reality, she’s looking away, and I feel guilty.

I take out a small Haribo Goldbears bag from my purse and give it to the mom with a small smile and a nod to her son, unable to say anything.

I stare at the green bears in the bag, remembering North American green Haribo Goldbears are actually strawberry. I laugh out loud. Strawberries aren’t even green. My brother and I hated the green ones. We would fight over who had to eat them while sharing a bag 50/50.

Actual red strawberries are delicious, but society has somehow decided they’re not good enough and we need to manufacture green, unhealthy, hard-to-chew versions of them shaped like bears. Real strawberries don’t have thick skin. They bruise. They rot. But they’re, well, real. I guess they remind me that random crying and existential crises are just part of life. Human emotion is so depressing and pointless, but somehow, it makes everything…mean something.