Today, I'm going to tell you the tale of one of the very few typical-of-pretty-much-everyone's-childhood stories I have.
Bee stings.
My first (and so far only) was completely avoidable and I can absolutely blame it on my older sister.
No, but like... Seriously.
Okay, not really, but I'll tell you how it all went down.
First off, my sister is almost eight years older than I am, so when I was a kid, I automatically looked up to her and wanted to do as she said, regardless of whether or not that was a good decision.
I have since learned.
Many years ago, my family was stopping by a little shop that opens in the Summer for hotdogs, ice cream, and the like.
I was looking forward to these things.
Instead, I got this.
We were standing at the top of a hill:
Now, most children do want to roll down hills.
I understand this.
I was not most children.
So, to begin with, I really just did not want to do the normal-child thing of rolling down the hill.
Grass is dirty, worms freaked me out, sometimes grass made me itchy (which got worse with age), I feared rolling right into traffic... and so on.
With some coaxing, I (for whatever reason) was convinced that doing this thing was actually a proper plan.
Much like her frustration when I was not a fluent English speaker at two years old, all she wanted was to have me experience an authentic childhood thing.
All I wanted was ice cream.
So, I roll, like any other child would have done.
And, of course, I roll over a bee.
You know, despite the literal pain in my ass, I remember being very concerned about the bee.
I pictured a bee-crime scene and I wondered if his bee family would miss him.
Perhaps they'd send the bee-bulance, but it would "bee" of no use.
I had killed him.
With my butt.
We rushed home for an embarrassing round of "Here, hold that chair while Mommy takes a tweezer to your ass,"
And I resigned myself to a life inside, forever, because screw the outside world and its hills.
In case you are on the edge of your seat wondering, yes.
Yes, I totally did get some ice cream.
Looking out the window today, I am reminded that…
I have always hated the snow.
Mostly, I only looked forward to snow when there was enough to keep me from standing outside neck deep in it, waiting for the bus.
Now, don't say to me, "Then why live here???"
I have lived in the harsh desert lands as well.
Didn't work out.
I like it here. I do.
I also think the snow is very pretty.
And not liking to be in the snow, even as a child, certainly didn't stop my friends from outright forcing me to have a good time in the white, Wintery muck.
I did, indeed, have a good time.
…Once in a while.
Even in high school, we used a recycling bin:
Created snow-bricks:
And used said bricks of snow to make a very intense snow-fort:
It was around this time that it occurred to me that growing up didn't have to mean no longer having fun or being imaginative.
Being inventive is what makes life interesting.
After two nose bleeds, literal blood, sweat, and tears went into making that damn fort.
There were also many times before and after that day where R rated snow people were created.
Still, none of these memories, precious as they are, can convince me that going outside in the snow is better than sitting cozy inside, watching the snow from a window instead.
Happy snow day, to those who have it today.
Some people are aware that Oh Hell, Donna! used to look very different.
This is because the first page was done long before even Deddrie (www.deddrie.com) was a thing, and that comic has been around for about a decade or so.
...Longer?
Oh crap.
How old am I???
In any case, I'm not ready to show you those embarrassing days of Donna yet.
I might for fun once the comic is up and running.
Instead, I'll show you a different thing that wound up a giant pile of failure.
I'm showing you this because I KEPT it.
I kept it just like I kept everything of Donna, until I was ready to come back to it again.
My hope is that one day, Risker will go that way too.
Actually, I think it would work well as a videogame.
This was the page that made it to any kind of portfolio:
Out of the twenty something pages planned, only four were ever completed...
And they were mostly shitty.
I was BIG on detail work, but I had no sense of anatomy or pacing or layout or... Anything, really.
That being said, the style itself was kind of neat, and
if I ever have the time, I might use it for something else
*coughDONNAcough*
The two main characters were Risker:
Such... emo...
And Katryna, who I'd need to rename.
Seeeeee, she was created before the hurricane of a different spelling, but I feel the fact that her main move is to spin around like a bladed tornado might cause some problems.
I'll have to think about that one...
Other sketches for her and what eventually became her were about as unsuccessful as those two random tails you'll never see again.
(Was this early Rage or...?)
If she were a superhero...
Future... steampunk... something?
Oh, and the plot of this story had something to do with Risker's mom being kidnapped to use as basically a mini baby factory for monsters.
He spends the first half of his story looking for her, and the other half trying to defeat his dad...
Who has one of the worst character designs ever.
Ever.
Even the Snykelbei...stump... Whatever.
Even that thing that eventually became a scratch drawing for whatever reason:
Started off with a different design:
I went through a phase of things like this, and I wanted them ALL to be in Risker.
The henchmen/soldiers eventually got more human-like:
AAaaaaand of course there were plenty of other characters that didn't quite make it.
Seriously. The Hell was some of this crap?
Oh, and all the badguys had a symbol that worked as a brand.
Risker and Kat both had them as well, though Risker's is shorter because he flipped out and screwed it up.
These were other ideas for that thing:
Fun fact, that top one was made into a real, wearable necklace in a shop class once.
Made out of metal and everything.
It was Kat's necklace, you see.
I was like, really sure that I was going to stick with this particular storyline and such.
SO sure, that I have a tattoo and everything.
Yep.
Mind you, I love my tattoo, and at this point it represents more of who I am than it ever did for this comic.
Still, I'd like to make this into something one day.
We'll see.
For now, it'll wait in the morgue just like Donna, Stitches, Moth and everything else I brought back in the last few years did before.
People find themselves drawn to different professions for a lot of reasons.
Personally, if I had my way and all the money required, I'd be a cartoonist.
Still, gotta make a living somehow, and being a Psychologist not only makes sense for me, but allows me the opportunity to help someone...
...Or accidentally screw someone up pretty badly.
Exciting!
Okay, so I'm actually pretty terrified.
That being said, I learned what to do from my classes, and what NOT to do from most of my therapists.
I've had a lot of therapists.
I take this as a strength.
I've been where the client is.
Also, as a therapist, I'll know that not all cases will be the same.
I even had a therapist direct me to a hypnotist who got SUPER excited over the idea of me puking in her office.
Let me explain that one.
See, I told her that I was having nightmares.
She asked what happens when I wake up.
I told her that if they are really bad, I get sick.
Her response was:
And so my response was:
And my mother promptly removed me from the woman's office.
Mind you, I've had nice, sane therapists too.
My current one, in fact.
She's been very helpful, which means she's been supportive in a way that allows me to come up with what I need to do for myself.
She guides without telling, and gives hope when needed.
The one before her also wasn't awful.
She was an art therapist and helped me learn that I like art therapy techniques but would like to do other things with clients.
The one before that one was mostly... Good?
...ish?
She went out of her way to say that once I was diagnosed with PTSD, that would be my life forever.
Don't tell your client, who is in your office to get better, that there is no such thing as healing or a future without intense psychological pain.
Not cool.
Also, she was wrong.
So, let's get to the utter shit of it, shall we?
When I was of Bat Mitzvah age, I went to a woman about my crippling anxiety and dealing with some physical pain.
After hearing that I was not going through this traditional Jewish ceremony (which was a very minor part of my story), she explained to me that:
Yeah.
She decided to let me know that I'd be "letting my congregation down" and that the rabbi and my own PARENTS would hate me for not doing it.
This was utter crap.
I responded with a:
And my parents reassured me that they weren't going to disown me AND that I didn't have to see that woman ever again.
It turned out that my family actually knew her, but didn't realize that she had a different last name than her child.
My father was training her child for his/her Bar/Bat Mitzvah.
Projection! Don't do it!
Next up was a woman I actually had twice.
What I mean by that is that I saw her for many months, then switched to someone else, and then tried her again.
I had left the first time because she was very open about also being the therapist for a frienemy of mine.
She'd talk openly about said friend/enemy and I felt uncomfortable, realizing she was probably doing the same about me.
Breach of confidentiality, for one thing.
The second time was somehow worse.
I was talking about something... I don't remember what.
It triggered her.
She started crying.
A lot.
I was not crying.
Pretty much everything this lady did went on my "Don't do this to people" list.
Still, not as bad as a woman who forced me to take drugs.
Look, if you have a chemical imbalance and want to be on medication, more power to you.
It can be helpful.
I didn't want it.
Beyond that, I had ZERO signs of clinical ANYTHING that wasn't direct cause and effect.
I had anxiety and some depression because my legs didn't work right and my sister was scary.
I wanted to talk about it.
I wanted to find ways to work with it and build my life into something better.
She decided that would be too difficult, and handed me a pill.
Since I had said from day one that I did not want to take any medications, and she had agreed...
I figured I must be REALLY screwed up for her to demand I try them.
...So I took the pill.
It didn't take long before I started feeling like I wanted to kill myself.
I had never felt like that before.
Thankfully, I was able to see that it was the medication having a strange effect on me.
In retrospect, the fact that she didn't mention that as a possible side effect, the fact that she talked me into taking something at all, and the fact that she didn't mention just STOPPING instead of weening off of it could be dangerous...
Bitch could have killed me.
DON'T DO THIS TO PEOPLE.
And you know what her response was when I said I wasn't going to take it anymore?
Thankfully, I had brought Dad in that day.
I don't even know why I had dragged him in.
Maybe I was afraid of what else she'd ask me to do.
He told me I never had to see her again.
...She had always silently repeated everything I said with her own lips anyway.
That was really creepy.
Like I said before, there have been good therapists in my life.
They don't need to be on this list in pictures because every day that I talk about the progress I've made shows how not-shitty they are.
Those are the people I hope to emulate.
I hope to be a not-shitty therapist.
I currently have a band-aid on each thumb as I type this blog entry.
I consider myself a careful person, really... and I wouldn't call myself clumsy per se...
But I'll let you kids decide for yourselves.
I started young with the accidentally-hurting-myself-in-stupid-ass-ways thing.
My mother still feels guilty about an incident where I fell out of the shopping cart.
Dude.
Those things are, like, designed to avoid this.
I still don't understand how I managed such a feat without breaking my legs in order to get out...
But I clearly remember the milk isle zooming in toward my face:
Obviously, I survived. I probably lost a tooth though.
I can say that, because I was generally losing teeth during these incidents.
Considering all the oral surgery I wound up having as an adult later, it was probably for the best that I just get the baby teeth out of the way fast anyway.
I was walking along with a straw in a drink and a loose tooth to play with (do you see where this is going?) and not ONLY did I stick my loose tooth INTO the straw for fun, but then I tripped.
This resulted in RIPPING THE TOOTH OUT OF MY FACE while also smashing the rest of me to the ground.
Very efficient, really.
Doorknobs often had a similar effect. See, I was "doorknob height" and wasn't always aware of my surroundings.
I blame inner ear issues.
Either way,
Lost at least one that way.
By now, you've heard tales of how often I cut my hands open while carving pumpkins, or stabbing myself in the thumbs while sewing (often straight through the nail)...
But one time, I actually learned a lesson during a sewing mishap.
You know what? I'm not gonna illustrate this one because it still ickles me.
I tend to stick sewing needles pretty much wherever I can, with the (often very, very wrong) assumption that it will assist in my not losing them.
So, I'm sitting on my parent's couch, sewing stuff.
Probably making one of these:
So cute.
Such pain.
And I put the needle in the couch next to me, just slightly, thinking I'll be able to pull it out by the thread later.
Then I couldn't find it.
...
Yep.
Cue a few days later where I'm on the same couch, trying to get something that has fallen behind said couch, getting up to sit on my knees... on the couch.
Right.
Our needle friend is promptly found.
It goes up into my thigh.
Let me clarify...
It's not like, poking from the side into my thigh. It's going from the top of my knee UP into my thigh-meats, along the thigh itself.
Oh my fuck.
There are no words to describe the combined horror, shame, pain, disgust and so on that I experienced in this moment.
*ahem*
Moving on.
Did I mention I've managed to STAB myself?
Some were small, like the x-acto knife at art school.
We were snowed in, so there was a moment of, "Whelp, glad I didn't cut off my thumb. Wouldn't have been able to get to a hospital in time to save it. Whoops."
Instead, I merely jammed it into the tip of my thumb.
There's a vein at the base of my palm that had flipped out during this process.
This happened a decade ago and it still puffs up if I'm stressed.
...
Probably a terrible sign.
Still, not as bad as the time I stabbed myself in the shoulder while working retail.
See, I was diligently cutting apart and collapsing boxes for storing them in the back.
"The back" was basically a hallway with shelves of walls filled with random crap to sell.
Knowing we were the only two in the store, and knowing I had gone back there, I guess my work-buddy forgot.
She didn't see me sitting in this hallway cutting boxes with the box cutter.
She walked into me, kicking the box away.
This was fine except:
I remember thinking, "Oh, that didn't happen. I'm just holding the box cutter slightly PAST my shoulder. Here, I'll pull it awa- ... Oh crud."
My coworker wanted to rush me to a hospital, but, being me...
Nope.
I just wanted to keep on workin'.
I still have a scar from it, but obviously I was fine.
Well, obviously I'm fine NOW in any case.
...
Shh.
