‘Emotional Support Fish’ Blissfully Unaware of the Crippling Responsibility It Shoulders Every Day
Spring has sprung, and as students near the ever-frightening end of the semester, mental health has been rapidly declining. Between the onslaught of finals and the fact we won’t be getting another Flying High Circus event for a fat while, students are stressed to the absolute max. FSU Junior Kyra Montez has been struggling recently to scrape her mental health off the shoe of rock bottom like so many of us at this point in time. While many have turned to the comfort of animal companions--emotional support cats have reached an all-time high since around March of 2020-- others like Montez with a tighter budget have had to… settle on their coping mechanisms.
“I think it all started with my boyfriend of three years leaving me after admitting he never loved me. He thought we were just fuck buddies the whole time. That caused some damage. Then there was the whole pandemic thing--I got COVID three times regardless of quarantining which dunked my grades and made me lose my financial support. That sucked. Then I got a nicotine addiction, my car got totaled by a football player, and I got shanked in the back alley behind Bajas,” She lifted up her shirt to show us an absolutely sick stab wound in her abdomen and continued, “So I’ve been trying to claw my way to some semblance of stability lately. I tried positive affirmations, hot yoga, even a drawn-out ho phase that only got me chlamydia instead of a single orgasm. Then it hit me, I was lonely; I needed a support animal.”
‘Swim Shady’ as Montez lovingly dubbed said support animal, is a very semi-average goldfish that occasionally bumps into the walls of his filterless aquarium. Since Montez has severe allergies towards anything with fur and the budget of an aspiring actress, this was truly the best she could do. Fortunately, she says Swim Shady’s bubbly little presence has already worked wonders on her mental state, “For such a little guy, he really does give me a lot of hope, you know? I feel like he’s really here for me.” We got to see that Swim Shady has also developed a new hobby of playing dead, in which case Montez went dead silent until he perked up and jolted back to earth.
“I’d give the fish a week tops,” said Montez’s roommate Julie Gibson, checking to make sure Montez was still coddling the fish in the other room before whispering to us, “She’s trying to teach it how to do flips and shit, getting way too attached. Just get this bitch some therapy already.” When asked how he was handling the entirety of Montez’s stress and mental anguish, Swim Shady simply responded with a faint but profound, “Glub, glub.” We wish them both the best.