"Maybe I should have asked for help" by PQHAÜS

Acrylic on canvas / 24x30 inch / 2026 / PQHAÜS

A few years ago, I revisited the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I was reminded that they once kept great white sharks there, from 2004 to 2011. Even with one of the largest tanks in the world, even with constant care and precision, it was not enough. Over time, the sharks showed signs of stress. Not something most visitors could point to, but something the body remembers. Movement became inefficient. Living became effortful. The tank did not hurt them directly. It simply exposed a limit.

The program ended when that limit became impossible to justify. The sharks were released back into the ocean. Not framed as failure, not as loss. Just as the only honest option left. The aquarium could contain them, but it could not give them what they needed to exist without harm.

I learned that great white sharks recognize other individuals. They are not unaware. They simply choose distance. They move alone, not because solitude is comforting, but because closeness is dangerous. Energy drains faster when you stay near. Risk multiplies. Survival depends on space.

At the time of my visit, I was quietly drowning in my own head. Nothing visible. Nothing dramatic. Just a constant pressure, like being submerged without water. I moved through the aquarium functioning, listening, absorbing information, while something in me was working to stay upright, to not surface too fast, to not be noticed.

I stood in front of the open sea tank for a long time. There was no shark there anymore. Just water, glass, and my own reflection breaking apart as people passed behind me. I imagined the great white after its release, cutting through endless blue, no edges, no containment. Instinct without permission. Distance without apology. And without trying to, I saw myself in that motion.

I recognized the same structure in myself. How distance had become architectural. How I learned to keep people at a precise remove, not out of indifference, but calculation. I knew exactly how close was too close. I knew when to step back before anything could take hold. It was not that I lacked feeling. It was that feeling carried consequences I did not know how to survive.

When I left the aquarium, I did not feel resolved. I felt thinned out, like something essential had been set down without ceremony. A version of me stayed behind, facing the glass, fluent in restraint. That part understood how to survive by disappearing just enough. By staying intact. By calling silence discipline instead of fear.

I still think about that version of myself. Not with nostalgia, not with shame. With recognition. It did what it had to do. It kept the body moving when stopping would have meant collapse. But lately, I notice that I am not standing in front of the glass anymore. I am elsewhere. Less contained. Spending more energy than I am used to. Allowing inefficiency. Letting myself be seen in ways that feel reckless and unfinished.

I do not know yet what replaces distance. I only know I am no longer mistaking it for oxygen.