Reader Question Two! Fear and Loathing... Inside My Head

This one will be in response to a reader question about my fears... Which kind of creeps me out on some level cause it was an anonymous person and what the fuck is this person going to do with the information once he or she has it and...

Okay, let's go ahead right now and add “paranoid” to the list of things wrong with me.

As for stupid habits that were originally based in fear, you can add:

Peaking behind the shower curtain, just to “check”

This is from a few random bad experiences and bad people doing stupid pranks (*cough*HIGHSCHOOL*cough*EXBOYFRIEND*cough*ANDMYSISTER*cough*) smooshed with nightmares and the fact that my trauma addled brain couldn't tell the difference after a while.

and...

Skipping the last step on a staircase

The stair thing is because of getting hurt a very long time ago. “Very long” being like twenty freaking years ago.

Though, that one is now limited to the main staircase in my parent's house, and I do the shower thing less these days. It's really all just habit now, with much less serious concern behind the acts.

Next on the list of things I avoid as much as I can: Dogs.

 

My issue with dogs is that if I don't know the personality of the dog, I don't know what the dog will do. Since I'm small, if a big dog jumps, that means I will go down and get hurt. If a little dog bites, that means I can't outrun it and I will get hurt.

I'm also allergic to dogs, so it's unfortunate that they are playful things that like to get REALLY CLOSE TO YOUR FACE.

I'm allergic to cats, but they mostly care less and we can leave each other alone.

Dogs are invasive and overly friendly, or overly invasive and aggressive. Very rarely have I come across a dog that would just leave me the fuck alone. Either way, they remind me of the traits I also don't like in human beings.

Dogs are man's best friend and I'm not particularly fond of either one.

Other allergy fears are more things I can't always avoid, like grass.

This isn't just a “oh no, my nose is running and my eyes are watering because someone just mowed the lawn” allergy.

To give you an idea, I was once laying on the grass (like normal children do) and looking at clouds with friends. I started feeling really nauseous.

I got up, and my entire back and arms and anything that was anywhere near the grass was covered in a giant, itching, fiery red rash.

A shower fixed it, but oh my dear fuck.

I'm not even going to draw that because of how sad and horrible it is.

It's the reason I went off to the other side of the country, and why it was incredibly heart breaking to learn that I still had bad (even worse) allergies out where there is no grass.

Well, no grass that grows naturally on lawns, anyway.

Now we get to the real meat of this answer.

I have a few fairly reasonable fears, or at least fears that were reasonable until I blew them out of proportion.

But! The two things that are completely irrational fears that actually have caused me extreme distress in my life for NO FLIPPING REASON are these:

Zombies

and worms

As you can see, they are kind of related in my head.

I have a problem with amputation. This is not to say that I can't talk to someone who has had something amputated, and the average limb removal in a movie just irks me a little. When there is torture involved, I will get sick.

But, my issue with amputation is a fear of losing my own limbs. Luckily, my arms have not so far gone the way they could have. I even gained back the feeling in my ring fingers after not having that for many years. Still, I'm deeply afraid of this.

It's also a matter of pride. There is something to be said about the fact that without an x-ray, the average person would not notice my bones. Even at my thinnest, I'm just skinny, rather than obviously deformed in some way. To remove a limb would be noticeable. I would be noticeably differently-abled, and the way I am, I would most likely not take it very well.

Zombies get limbs blasted off all the time and rip off the limbs of the living with ease.

...and it's the turning into a zombie that scares me. It's the being chased, and watching your friends die, and knowing you've been bitten and hoping you are immune and knowing you will turn and OH GOD what if you can still THINK? What if you are still aware, but can't do anything to stop yourself??

Worms are creepy to me because there are other kinds of worms that can get into your body, your brain and eyes and such... and do things. Bad things.

Earth worms are limbless things.

Faceless and limbless, they writhe around and look as though they are in agony. When cut in half, both ends still wriggle about and flail, searching for a way out.

...And they eat corpses.

Maybe that boils down to a fear of being dead. Not dying, but dead. Like the fear of having it all be a dream or some vivid hallucination and I've been in a hospital all along. That idea isn't so bad but for the fact that I would think, “It was all in my head. I had all that power and I could have done ANYTHING in my dream world, and I wasted it.”

My head isn't normal.

The worm issue is slowly going away. They just depress me these days.

But the zombie thing? FOO. You should have heard what I said to myself in my head after the “bath salts” stuff. I was honestly afraid.

This is so very stupid.

I was a key member of the ZDC (Zombie Defense Corps) at my old college, you know. Did important things. Mmyep. *Puts thumbs behind suspenders proudly*

But, I still absolutely fear zombies.

I don't even like normal, living zombies. People who are willing to just be so cut throat or people who are yes men and don't even care to strive for anything greater. These are both types of zombies to me.

Ghosts may also be a not-normal reason. I have no issue with the idea that part of us may wander about after death. If there are ghosts, I don't think most of them would be harmful to the living, and even those that are seem to be stories about an encased emotion, more than the whole person.

I think ghosts are just pieces of people that chipped off along the way.

But, if there are ghosts and if I could one day be one, I would hate to be able to see people and hear them and have them not see me. It would be like being deaf again.

Not being heard or noticed when you so desperately wish to be is like screaming inside a clear box.

So, again, ghosts are just depressing to me. Not particularly scary.

Cannibals?

I have no issue with cannibals.

Of Foodstuffs and Other Terrors

I'm going to finally respond to “Wrote a Blog-Like Thing” and tell you what led to my recent eating issues, by telling you a little bit of my history with food.

We've never gotten along terribly well.

From age one there was an issue.
There is a chance that I was reacting poorly to soy in the formula, since I do have an intolerance to soy which was at one point a full blown allergy. However, soy wasn't quite as common in EVERY GODDAMN THING when I was an infant.
 

~~Before anyone chimes in with “all your problems are because your mom didn't breastfeed you” I'm going to go ahead and say A. No. and B. she actually tried to breastfeed and just couldn't. 

It's like telling someone who has no feet that by not running, they are purposefully trying to get fat.
By telling my mother that she did something wrong by not doing something she really physically couldn't do, you are a bad, hateful person.

...Quite frankly, it's right up there with people explaining to me that I'm unhealthy because I don't eat the things I'm seriously allergic to.  It's backwards, stupid logic. 

So, moving on.~~~

I was diagnosed with a “failure to thrive” and often this is an emotional thing. Babies sometimes get this when they just don't have a will to live, as well as possible physical reasons. So, it could have been a lot of different things.  "Failure to Thrive" is kind of a catch all in this respect.  

Regardless of the reason, the doctors didn't have much faith that I would survive, because food and I were already on bad terms.

 

It was like getting in the middle of a gang war. What doctor wants to do that?

Luckily, interns are used to being thrown into the middle of gang wars, so an intern put some cereal in milk, which I guess flavored it or something? I'm not really sure what went down, actually. One way or another though, this guy got me to eat.

My thought, as depressing as it may be, is that with all my other medical ailments putting me in incubators and making it most likely pretty uncomfortable to do anything, even as an infant... Having someone just be with me and spend that time with me may have done a lot.

My parents absolutely tried and they are wonderful people. However, when you've got one daughter who is loudly mentally unstable and then a much younger one who is physically funky, something has to give. I could never cry as loud as my older sister could. That is a simple fact.

By four years old, I had the rest of my hearing back.

Lemme explain that one. 

I had been mostly deaf due to a common fluid problem, but it took two surgeries to fix instead of one because my inner ear, like the rest of me, is kind of wonky looking. This made it so my speech was also funky. I spoke the way I had always heard things, which was reeeeaaaalllly quiet and kinda mumbled. I still speak this way if I get nervous.

Anyhoo, I had my hearing but I couldn't really communicate well. I could understand everyone around me, but only my sister (of all freaking people) could ever understand what the Hell I was saying.

Around this time, I fell down.

Hard.

In my memory, there was a push involved and a traumatic moment attached, but we seem to have chosen to pretend it didn't happen.

...Kay.

So, my parents took me to the doctor and because we were having a bit of a disagreement as to how it happened, and any verbal argument from me wasn't entirely audible, it was decided that my S shape of a septum was just yet another deformity.

The problem here is that having a deformity from birth isn't something so easily fixed when you are a little kid, as it could just grow back as you age.

...So I didn't get my nose fixed. He took out my adenoids instead. 

It didn't help.

Not being able to breathe meant I couldn't really taste anything either.

More than that, I had to breathe out of my mouth. This meant that I couldn't scarf food and I had to be extra particular about drinking, because I wouldn't be able to breathe.

Beyond that, I had come in contact with a number of things over the years that had made me itchy. We understood that I had food allergies, but we had no idea what that meant other than a lot of food seemed to make me really uncomfortable.

We didn't even really look into what the foods were, besides nuts. This made for a vague sense of ALL food being potentially unpleasant.

This was made much worse when I was thirteen.

We went to Israel.

As a Jew-type person, this should have been a wonderful experience.

It was not.

The main reason?

Turns out, I'm allergic to chickpeas. Hummus is kinda big there.  Kind of a big freaking deal.  

At the time, we had no idea that anything, even nuts could do what this thing did.

I blew up like a balloon, broke out in hives all over my body, my eyes swelled shut and blinded me...

And still, I was the calmest person in the whole damn room.

My parents were in a frenzy, unsure of what to do “What the fuck is an epi-pen??”

There were doctors on the phone telling them I may need something injected into my heart...

But, no one said to take me to a hospital either.  The phone-doctor just said to watch me.  ...Having no epi-pen, what would have happened if I had keeled over?

But I didn't.

I threw up. Waited for it all to get worse or better, and then calmly stated that I should eat something I know I'm not allergic to, like pizza.

This is hilarious in retrospect, because it turned out at the time that I was also allergic to wheat and tomato, but to a more mild degree. I've since grown out of them for the most part. Somewhat experimental allergy drops have helped.

By the way, ordering pizza on the Sabbath in Israel?  Amazing freaking feat.

Either way, after all that...

It left me, every now and then, like this:

I was pretty good for many years at hiding this. People could eat things I was allergic to, and I'd just quietly panic and tell them it was fine. I'd only seriously panic if a boyfriend ate these things, because then kissing him could be potentially dangerous.

I felt like a giant asshole.

“How dare I expect a man who loves me to not eat something that could kill me? I'm ruining his life!”

Talking to anyone else, I'd think they were being unreasonable. They can't help what could hurt them. But me? No no. Ever accommodating I am. Even if it actually does, in the end, kill me.

This is part of what led to the Fishbone incident.

Part one and two are here:

How a Fishbone is Slowly Driving Me Mad

Okay, So It Wasn't the Fishbone

At fifteen, we went to a crackpot quack of a surgeon to fix my nose. He was purely a cosmetic doctor, which was upsetting. He wanted to shave my jaw down because I looked too “masculine” and give me my sister's nose. He wanted to make me look like a different person.

Being a fifteen year old girl with a speech impediment, a slouch from boobs that were too big, gnarly hair... My self esteem was already garbage.

I did not need that shit.

So I just cried a lot and for some reason they let him cut me open anyway, in hopes that he'd find my damaged Happy gland.

He sort of fixed one side a little.

I still couldn't really breathe, which led to another doctor giving me a nasal inhaler that I couldn't use. 

 It was not a lung issue, you freak.

Also, throughout my childhood, I would stand at the table or eat elsewhere. This was because of two things:

A. Pressure. The pressure to eat like a normal person made me feel like it was something I could fail at, and so I pretty much made myself fail.

When I'm upset, I don't eat, and my childhood wasn't exactly fantastic. This was not my parent's fault at all, by the way.

I want to make that clear.

B. I felt silly and too small. I had to sit on phone books in order to reach the table.

So, fine.

Back to the nose thing.

After a very unpleasant healing process, I could wheeze through my nose with a lot of struggle, but at least I looked the same. I guess he was afraid to even straighten the damn thing with the “fuss” I had made about him wanting to rearrange my face.

Not enough space to breathe, smell or taste, but there was just enough space to shoot food out of my nose by accident.

I can not express how incredibly painful and embarrassing this was.

Powered cheese product on macaroni should never exit through nostrils.

Five years after that, a reconstructive surgeon fixed my nose for real. I was very happy.

He also went out of his way to try to prevent me getting anything else done, realizing that I was also asking for things I didn't need. He worried that I had Body Dysmorphic Disorder, and... maybe? I may have had some variation of it. I figure I was just oogly and now I've accepted that I'm... a “unique” kind of pretty.

I felt so bad for my mother here. Her immediate instinct was to jump on “OH! Don't worry, you don't have BDD!” The problem with that was that if I didn't have it, that meant I was ACTUALLY as hideous as I thought I was, and that it wasn't just in my head.

It seems to have been a phase though, rather than the actual mental illness. It pops up every now and then when I'm already depressed. My brain goes to “you are deformed” and just kinda sits on that.

...

Back to food.

With all this nonsense, it isn't really that remarkable that I've spent most of my life underweight.

I don't really look like that. But, it is how I feel sometimes. I liked the year or so when I was a bit more filled out. I looked the same, just healthier.

After the Fishbone incident/Everything that was where I was living for ten or so months, I wound up like this:

So eating was just... Not something I ever associated with causing happiness.

And now, you know.

Reader Questions! One!

Reader Question!!

From Jenniquelle.  ...Or "Jeniquelle?"  I don't remember.  Jenny Jenny with a French sounding thing.
She asked stuff:


“Why do you draw hands and fingers all long and skinny?  Is it a style thing, or is it a reference you use?  Are your hands really like that?”


While varying in just how insanely rude, this is actually a question that has come up a lot.

The answer lies in this picture:

I’ve been told (by good friends, mind you) that I have “spider hands”…  Yes.

EDIT: My very close friend who apparently pays a "great deal of attention to people's hands" just read this and said "Oh pah, you don't have spider hands.  You have very expressive hands and square fingered idiots with much less grace just don't understand how you could do it."  Yay!  So *sticks out tongue*  I be purdy.

This can be further explained by actual photographs here: Of Vomit, Fire Water and Hospitals



The other question was from an anonymous person, asking if I have any seriously irrational fears.  The answer is yes, many.  I'll do a separate post to list my stupid ass fears and my irrational behavior and habits.


...To clarify, I'll be doing the ones I've always had.  Nothing new from the past half a year.  I've gotten so full of fuckness that it just wouldn't be fair to the neuroses that have been with me forever.

Bees, and General Bullshittery

 So, first of all...

There is this:

 

The man was riding along in his convertible with the top down, and had on a visor instead of a full cap.  His top had no top while he rode in a car that was topless.  I... can't.  I just can't.

...

My parents and I went off to an IHOP.  This is kind of a big deal because while I wasn't a huge fan of such places to begin with, IHOP and Denny's are pretty much the worst kinds of places for me to be these days.  They are crowded and loud, they don't look terribly sanitary to me, and they serve a lot of things I'm allergic to.  BUT, I went and sat and had a good time, even if I couldn't gather the courage to eat a freaking piece of bacon.  

Guh.  

My life and what it has become.

So I drew stuff.  Below is the page I doodled upon and below that are close ups of things:

The one confused by paper might be the best one.


I also tried to draw the pancakes that had blueberries and whipped cream, but it came out kinda poopish:

Also, a man with a baby face on the side:

...


Let's end with bees.

Cat-astrophe

As you may know from Laundry Day is a Very Dangerous Day, our cat has been shitting all the goddamn where.

She had already been to the vet and been dubbed healthy.  We've tried new cat toys, litter, litter boxes, no litter boxes, too many litter boxes...

Finally it was decided to clip off the hair from her butt and see if that would help.

The cat is trolling us, so we decided to humiliate her.  No, not really.  Really, it was supposed to make her more comfortable.  She was also going to get another check up just to be sure.

Getting her into the crate was an adventure.  My mother told me to secretly get the crate while she tricked the cat enough to pick the cat up, facing her away from said crate.

Then, we had to pour the cat into the crate, with the crate facing upward.

 

 I shit you not.  The cat was most displeased.


The car ride was horrible, if only for the amazing amount of sad, SAD cat whining coming from the back seat.


 

Made worse by my mother's amazing ability to say horrible things as though they are not horrible.



 Once there, she was equally difficult to dump out of the crate.

 

 When taken away to have her butt hair clipped, I drew this at the office:

 

 Accurate.

Getting her back in to go home was easy, and she was very quiet on the ride home.

Since then, she's just been vomiting instead.

...On my purse.