Agnes the Unpredaceous Diving Beetle
I recently learned about Baby Face, the predaceous Diving Beetle who emerged as an adult still retaining its larval form's head. It passed away today, being observed by its owner who I believe is an entomologist? I wish I had learned of it before now, but in a way I am glad I did not, because its death would have brought me both relief, knowing it no longer suffers, and more agony at the fact that there simply wasn't any other outcome. The poor thing couldn't even eat. In the linked video its owner drops food into its tank and it runs over to the food, observes the food, and realizes that it cannot, with its head in such a state, consume the dead cricket. And then it just sort of floats there, holding the cricket underneath it, unmoving.
I wish I could talk to the dead, you know? Sometimes I think I can but I don't think it's true. I don't even know what I believe in regarding that. But if I got a genie lamp, I think "I wish Baby Face could come back to life—" (no, that's not it, life is the problem for Baby Face!) or maybe "I wish Baby Face could hear me—" (no, that'd end up with me dead because I know how genie magic works, thank you very much) or maybe "I wish Baby Face had been able to comprehend that it was so deeply loved by so many people on this weird soul wire we call the Internet. Can you tell it?"
I think that would be a pretty harmless wish.
If you haven't guessed by now, I am Baby Face. I feel like I am, anyway. I'm not dead, like Baby Face is, but I am trapped behind my own body. It was theorized by some that Baby Face had its adult head trapped within the larval head as some sort of underdeveloped mush, a cage within a cage within a cage, its little childhood brain unable to form itself into coherency. It is so young in the head. It is just trapped there in its own head, in its own head, in its own baby head. I am trapped here: in my own head. They call that dissociation though, and it is not considered unique. Usually it isn't considered anything.
I wonder—did it even realize that it was different? Did it realize at all that the process had gone wrong, and spit back out something most would call even more grotesque than its usual form? The funny thing about Baby Face is that it is a predaceous diving beetle—it hunts prey. And it is an insect, a form of life most consider beyond worthless. Very few are giving the regular, unbabied diving beetle any thought beyond maybe how fucked up it is—they kill their prey by releasing a juice that digests it alive, they literally turn their prey to liquid. They also resort to cannibalism when other food is scarce. The diving beetle is a galactic footnote, except for this specific one. I am terrified of turning into a regular diving beetle, and I hate myself for comparing myself to Baby Face at all. I am not special. I do not have the same uniqueness. I am only the same in the sense that I am an unmiracle, and I have the same suffering.
I cannot eat either, and I am just trapped alongside Baby Face, the body of an adult with an undeveloped brainmush sloshing around in my tiny toddler head, pasted atop an overgrown body like an art class collage, but this time around I don't even have venom I can cannibalize the predaceous man with. I didn't realize what happened until I was 13. Do you think Baby Face knew that there was something wrong with it, or do you think it died trying to figure out why it couldn't eat? Do you think its last thoughts were of hunger? Do you think his last thoughts were of hunger, or do you think I even occurred to him at all? No, he is not Baby Face, because he is not unique. The news these days tells me that he is not at all unique. I am Baby Face, the natural-born-predator that can no longer predate.
Did Baby Face even realize it had been defanged? Tamed? Turned helpless? Humans are actually nested right in the middle of the food chain, next to anchovies! Do you think most people realize how close we are to being liquefied like that, by the world around us, at all times? That everything is temporary? That we don't have to eat prey or our own kind, that we are not trapped behind sticky, unyielding, ossified flesh—we can break free, even if Baby Face can't, even if I can't? I believe in the inherent goodness of animal by virtue of its inability to fathom prejudice, and yet I recognize that most animals are still predatory, just by nature this time. Do you think we realize that there is something more out there for us, that we don't have to trap children inside of their own heads anymore? Everyone has a choice, except for when they don't.
I am sad that Baby Face had to suffer. I think I can empathize with this bug more than I can empathize with my own baby head. Yesterday I told my mom I couldn't believe I just let all that shit happen, as if I wasn't one of those little exceptions to the rule of everyone having a choice. As if I was not Baby Face walking, a human with a disgusting larval head that everyone can see but is just trying really hard to ignore because it's too difficult to talk about. There's a problem for another day.