The other night we were watching TV after the kids went to bed when the fish all of a sudden went ballistic. He flipped around and ran into the sides of his bowl and splashed water all over the place. I got up and peered into the water to find a fly floating upside down above the plastic seaweed. I grabbed a paper towel and attempted to scoop the dead bug out of the water, when he was suddenly very much NOT dead. His lifeless little body began to wriggle and his legs reached out to grab the paper towel and hold on for dear life as I pulled him out of the water. It’s so weird, because even though flies deeply disgust me (they like to eat poop), seeing that bug grasp at his last chance for survival like that kind of… did something to me. So instead of flushing him down the toilet as I had been planning to do, I went ouside and gently set the half-dead fly and the sopping paper towel on my welcome mat. In the morning the fly was gone.

For some reason, every time I think about the way his legs stretched out to grab hold of the towel, it makes me want to cry. And then I kind of want to puke, because I am crying over a stupid bug who likes to eat poop. Maybe it was witnessing that instinct to survive… Maybe I can identify with that somehow. I remember having this same feeling last spring, when I was trying to coax some sweet peas to sprout along my garden wall. Every morning I would go out to check on them, measuring their slow progress, and clearing away the weeds that popped up overnight. Every time I pulled a weed I always made sure to get the entire thing, roots and all. And every time I was amazed by how deeply the roots had grown in one night. Even though they were unwanted, I hated having to kill them. They fought so hard, growing right on top of each other, some of them reaching out tiny tendrils to pull themselves as high as they could go. Even with one night of growth, the weeds towered over my reluctant sweet pea sprouts. All they wanted to do was live. And it kind of broke my heart to be the instrument of their disposal.

Ugh, what am I saying? Why am I empathizing with pests? I mean, house flies and weeds. It’s kind of… pathetic, isn’t it? I wish I could identify with the sweet peas, who by the end of the summer were flourishing, providing me with bouquet after bouquet of sweet smelling blooms.

But all I could ever think about when I buried my nose in their blossoms were all those weeds who struggled to live, but were ripped out of the soil just so I could have something pretty.

I wish I didn’t have to write about that ridiculous fly. It is seriously embarrassing to try to explain my awe for this disgusting creature’s will to live. I am grossing myself out here. But it did awe me. And I do have to write about it.

I guess… maybe the reason these things strike me so deeply is that I have spent much of my life feeling as unwanted as those weeds, as disgusting as that fly. I too have struggled so many days to just survive. So many times I prayed, not for happiness or fulfillment, but just for stamina to make it through. Somewhere in me I believed if I could just grab hold of the towel and make it out of the water, everything would be ok. If I could just dig my roots in deep enough, I would figure out what to do next. And eventually, I really did get the hang of the “surviving” thing. So maybe now it’s time to finally start praying for happiness and fulfillment. I can start to loosen my white-knuckled grasp on just trying to make it through, and start focusing on actually living. It’s not enough to just be any more. I want to be happy.

And wherever that gross little fly is, I kind of hope he’s happy too. Me and that fly, we’re survivors.

Oh, sick.