Pandas Make Me Feel Guilty

Pandas make me feel super guilty. 

It isn't because they desperately need to reproduce in order to keep the species going.  That would be a semi-reasonable thing.  
Nope.

Pandas make me feel guilty because I was once a child, and now I can't let that go.

I'm the kind of person who remembers the worst things, generally blown out of any reasonable proportion, and has trouble with the recall of pleasant things, or positive things I may have done.

My sister is almost eight years older than I am.  Given that this incident took place at her Bat Mitzvah, we'll assume I was maybe five.

I was five.

I was five and yet I can't seem to shrug this off.

Pandas will always make me feel like an asshole.

See, there were these stuffed animals in balloons.  It was a cool concept, and most of them were filled with these hideous monkey things.  

 
They were probably not that scary, but they freaked me out pretty hardcore as a kid.

One of the balloons contained a panda.  

This was specifically meant to be my cousin's panda, as she was moving into a black and white apartment.  None of this is particularly relevant to her life now, yet I still want to send her a panda every time I see one.

I don't…

But I want to, like some crazed stalker.

I feel guilty, to this day, because over twenty years ago, a small child version of myself wanted a panda instead of a monkey.

I think I probably cried.  People felt bad for me.  Instead of going, "That dumb brat is having a hissy fit, don't give in!"  They gave me the panda.

In the end, that turned out to be it's own punishment.

Almost immediately, I felt like an ass.  I couldn't even have that childish satisfaction of "HAH!  I got what I wanted!" because I was too busy feeling like a jackass, but being too embarrassed to take it all back.

I was FIVE.

So, we took the panda home.

We had a Jack Russell Terrier at the time.  These dogs are hunters.  They'll tear anything apart.  

 
I was not particularly fond of this dog.

He was not particularly fond of the panda, and so the panda lost it's face.

 
My thoughts of, "Well, I could send the panda to my cousin anonymously" were destroyed.  Instead, I sat staring at the mutilated toy, feeling even worse.

Guilt became disgust and then wrapped back around to feeling guilty all over again.

It took a very long time, possibly years, before we threw the damn thing away.

So, well over twenty years later, my mother gave me something for my toothbrush.

Not only do I find pandas still make me feel like an asshole, the fact that the toothbrush goes up the ass of this panda made things worse.  Here is an actual photo of the thing: 

Adorable, right?  I used him and he was cute, but beyond the guilt, I was reminded every day of Memphis.

Mom and I were visiting Memphis Tennessee back in 2003 or 2004, looking at a college there.  We barely saw the school, but I loved the area.  The zoo was particularly interesting with all of it's Egyptian themed decor and animals that looked well taken care of and happy, which is rare for a zoo.

Thing was, there was this panda.

…

Come on, you knew the poop was coming eventually.

It was adorable.

And then it turned around.

PANDAS! 

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.

Laundry Day Is A Very Dangerous Day

And really any day in this household is a chaotic mess.  ...They mean well.

Living at home again is very odd on several levels, beyond being something I hoped would never happen.  I'm in my mid twenties, so I'm very content with the idea of at least pretending to be a real adult type person, but these are strange times in our economy, as well as in my life.
  
I forgot about the dangers of doing laundry here, for example.
Going down the basement steps with a hamper:

Spiders in the basement:

Also, the dangers of a bored out of her mind cat.  This is a very pretty cat:

She is an indoor cat, and lived with dogs and another indoor cat who was de-clawed, but she was never de-clawed herself.  She was also raised by a dog, for the most part.  These each come with their own special problems.
Mainly though, her playfulness causes a lot of danger.  If you've ever seen "Simon's Cat," you'll quickly get the idea.

Pain when feeling playful and one is not wearing shoes:

Face planting on stairs when she feels like playing at bottom and you are going up:

Face planting with everything broken when she feels like playing at the top of the stairs:

Lately, she has also started trolling my family.
We've decided this is all because she doesn't get enough attention.
By “we” I mean my family has been watching cat shows on television too much.  The vet said she's healthy, so yeah... this shouldn't be happening.
She'll use the litter box, but still shit wherever she damn well pleases. 
She'll shit by the computer, by my parent's bed...  Every goddamn place. 

She also has an issue with my sister's dog.  This, I find understandable.  The dog looks like a failed muppet.
It's like something Jim Henson shat out on an off day and went “Ew.  That'll never work on Fraggle Rock.  Better put the sad little pathetic thing up for adoption before Gonzo accidentally blows it up or something.”

To clarify, this is a “hairless Chinese Crested” and it's the same breed as the dog once voted ugliest dog in the world.  That particular dog was more like what my sister's would be after reading the Necronomicon, but as this particular “dog” ages, it's getting close to that anyway. 

Still, she's a smart stupid little thing.  Smart because she is very manipulative for a dog.  Stupid because we, as a family, aren't great at training things.

I'm amazed that I can take a shit by myself.  ...Though I learned by getting a treat of M&Ms every time I did it.  ...That says something.

So, while the dog adds a creepy factor (and likes to go for my kneecaps when I enter the house) and the cat is sharp... there are also the other things in the house.  We have a turtle who my parents desperately wish to get rid of (it lead to the death of the other turtle), a snake that is so freaking lazy that it doesn't even want us to try to pretend the food is alive anymore, and bugs.  Some bugs, like my sister's pet hissing cockroaches, are on purpose:

Some are not. 

Seriously.  So many freaking spiders.  I honestly don't mind spiders, until there are tens of thousands of them in my face.

They have hammocks now.  It's like a freaking spider hotel.

I mind silverfish a lot less now than I used to, but I think it's because I looked them up and took the time to learn about what they really do.  Cockroaches are neat to me now too.  ...Spiders just get worse the more I know about them.

EDIT: The actual web-hammock:

I had also forgotten about the kind of non-sequiturs you hear in this house.  Things like “It's on fire again” and “I didn't know if it was poison ivy, so I touched it just in case” or even “Dad, I'm trying to learn how to wire a cat's jaw shut!”  ...Most of these are from my older sister.  The fire related ones tend to be my father.  Either way, the fuck. 

Okay, So It Wasn't The Fishbone

Okay. I'm going to go ahead and finish that “Fishbone Slowly Driving Me Mad” story.

Apparently, while the fishbone DID freaking hurt, the reason it was stuck snugly for a week and induced this horrible state for a month, was because of previous damage in my throat that I had been ignoring.

Shithead ER doctor who didn't even look at me before going “It's seasonal allergies” was actually kind of right. Sort of. It was a lucky guess.

Meanwhile, after waiting two weeks to see the real Ear, Nose and Throat doctor... which made it a month since I swallowed the bone... He ALSO didn't use a scope or anything. He decided I had acid reflux, though I had no other symptoms. He told me to lift the head of my bed with boards or bricks. Pillows wouldn't cut it, because they'd just force my head forward and wind up hurting my neck. Kay.

I'm tiny, so I had to enlist my housemates/at-the-time-boyfriend to assist. This took forever, as I had to be in tears before anyone would help me do such a thing that seemed so trivial. I should have just hired someone.

At some point during all this, we helped a friend do a video where I was pretending to break up with le at-the-time-boyfriend. Since I felt like he had been avoiding me (Well, lets face it, since we started dating), this induced the worst panic attack of my entire life. A good friend who also gets these sat with me and knew just what to do to get me to stop flipping out.

This was all after I had been forgotten about at the other doctor and walked home.
This would have been fine if I had had sunblock.
Or water.
I had neither. I came back brown and dehydrated.

The next day, I took a pill for acid reflux. It got stuck on whatever was wrong with my throat. I choked for a moment, then had another attack.

Sometime after that, I fell down in a Target from lack of food and being over heated/dehydrated. Housemate carried me to the car. I remember thinking “my hero!” and feeling really bad about it.
In retrospect, it's not like he took me to the hospital or even straight home. We did errands, picked up Other Housemate, found a puppy on the side of the road...

The puppy was adorable, but trying to find the owner became the important thing of that day, so I kind of got forgotten about.  ...again.

For two weeks, I attempted to eat one thing a day, and mostly failed. I went into a deep depression and it was during that time that Boyfriend broke up with me.
The final straw seemed to be when I explained that conditional love is not real love and it was driving me nuts.  I was afraid to tell him if I was upset or injured or needed help in some way, knowing he'd just stop "loving" me.
He agreed that it wasn't right.
Really, the kindest, most loving thing he ever did was let me the fuck go.

Immediately after breaking up with me, he took me to a movie.
Okay. So... All I needed to do was break up with him... and then he'd be a boyfriend? Kay.

It's been difficult since to not let his weirdness screw things up with any new potential romances.

"Do you really have a personality of your own or are you like the Pokemon Ditto?"

My new criteria for a boyfriend seems to be "Would actually stay for a while after taking me to the ER" and there is something very sad about that.

Somewhere before then had been an incident in a restaurant of someone swearing up and down there were no nuts in a product that was chock full of walnuts.

EDIT: Okay, so I had been to this place a few times before.  Awesome pulled pork and bagels.  I was waiting for my carpool to show up so we could go on a field trip.  Since I don't drive, it's actually rare that I'm anywhere alone, and I generally like that aspect of not driving.  
I wanted an apple turnover.  I asked if there were any nuts involved.  I was told "No" and I still asked again with an, "Are you sure?  Cause, I'm seriously allergic."  I was told "No, but one half is apple and the other half is peach."  Well, I like peaches and you couldn't tell what half was which anyway, so sure.  I got through the apple half with a smile on my face, and when I hit the peach half, it didn't even occur to me that he could have meant "So, the apple half is nut free, but the peach half is chock full of walnuts"... because that would be the stupidest thing in the world. 
But that is exactly what he fucking meant.  I had eaten one and realized while the second was in my mouth what was going on.  No rash or anything, but still a tree nut.  So, I ran to the bathroom and tried in vain to vomit.  Right.  Throat damage.  Kay.  A nice old lady handed me a glass of water.  I felt like a giant asshole.  
I sat back down and took too many Benadryl, and when my companions came, I told them what happened.  They were fine with the whole idea and I continued taking drugs for the rest of the day just in case.  Still went on that field trip though.

And then we started consistently living with another thing I was deathly allergic to... Which made me not want to even open the refrigerator anymore.
My sense of safety and my trust in others who "cared about me" was severely shaken.  Laughing it off didn't help.  It just let those who actually DID care think I was still okay.

In any case, I had reached the point where I really did not care if I lived or died, because it didn't feel like most other people particularly cared if I lived or died either.

I packed with a friend as much as I could, while contemplating doing the worst, “knowing” that Housemate and Ex were planning on driving down to my homeland, so they would take my packed crap. It would be fair, since I had packed Housemate's crap and my parents drove it to him right along with mine ten months prior.

Housemate didn't agree that he owed me anything, so that idea went away pretty quickly. However, I didn't know that it would no longer be a valid option until a week after I had already gotten home. I sent money repeatedly to Other Housemate to make sure it was all set, and got to work desperately trying to get a driver to move my crap.

Getting on the plane was interesting. Having a quiet panic attack for hours while people talk behind you about the very foods that can hurt you is really an odd sensation for a neurotic mess with serious food allergies while on a plane.

Anyway, I made it home. It's been weird... and everything I own is still on the other side of the country.
My clothing, my computer, my artwork, my books... If I had realized it would be this long, I would have shipped everything to myself in chunks. It doesn't really matter though.

I'd just like it out of the way of my former housemates.

In terms of having it here with me, so long as I'm back with my family, it can wait. My sanity, however, couldn't wait. I needed to leave in order to save my life.

So, yes. I failed, but it wasn't due to anything anyone assumed.

In fact, when I got back, I saw an Ear, Nose and Throat doctor I actually trust. He used a scope and everything.
 No, I don't have acid reflux.
I had three GIANT stripes of PAIN in the back of my throat from post nasal drip.
It was from environmental allergies.

I wasn't homeless, I was out there for more reasons than just Ex, and while I didn't get any closer to living my dream... I actually got a lot closer after moving back. I find that interesting.

Anyway, I had moved out there for a number of reasons.

A: My health. My allergies here are pretty bad, and I knew they wouldn't be the same out there. To a certain extent, I was right.

B: To live with someone I trusted who I thought cared about me like a sister.

C: To go to school and finish my degree.

D: To live in an art community.
E: To at least try to be with a man who seemed to really want to give it a shot.
...Unfortunately, he was only in it for the chase, and I don't play games.
Gee, sorry I'm not a conniving Hell-bitch?  What the fuck do you want from me?
If I learned any girl tricks during this time, I can honestly say that I'm sorry to whoever comes next, and that I hate him a little for turning me into exactly the kind of woman men complain about.
I wasn't that way to begin with.

My health is the one that really upsets me. I remember coughing, people saying happily “Yeah, that's seasonal allergies! Haw haw!” and I would shrug it off, pretending it wasn't happening.
I had moved across the country. I couldn't have this problem now.

The school part was only upsetting because it's a two year school. I was coming in with a year of work done. They told me that because those credits were randomly spread out within the program and everything had to be taken in a certain order and at a certain time, I would be part time forever... making me stay there for two and a half years.
No.

As for the art community:

It can go ahead and fuck itself.

Psychoanalytic Nonsense and Amusing Pictures

We made ink blots!  ...Then I tried to make them into what I saw, using pen.  ...Except for the blue one because I just found it pretty.  Weeeee

Okay, so this first one wound up some kind of evil dark warlord or something.  ...Possibly something from Kingdom Hearts.  Note the giant hands and tiny, almost pretty, skull-like head:

Next up, I first saw this one as a fish, so I drew that on the side.  In the end, I decided it was a dress.  Very moldy... but a dress:

This one is pretty.   Lookit:

This one wound up like... the cover for Moth or something.  The three chunks of book are called "Moth", "Black Widow", and "Wasp":

Feel free to read into these all you want.


ALSO!  We did the scribble game.  This is where one person draws a scribble, and the other draws a picture using that scribble.  In most of these, you can't really tell where the scribble was:

Everything I make is either derpy, has breasts, or is frightening.  ...What the fuck?