Did you try to eat weird things as a kid? This is another comic from about a year ago that I really enjoyed drawing. I’m currently on a trip so I thought I’d sprinkle a few older comics through my update schedule for a couple of weeks just to give myself a rest.
I’ve been compiling a list of the moments in my life when I experienced what I’d call a personal paradigm shift.
One of the earliest entries on the list happened in grade school. A classmate made a slapstick show of being unable to pick up his eraser: it somehow jumped from his hand to the floor, then across the table, then across the room. As he fumbled after it, the three of us sharing his table were overcome with laughter. After we’d collected ourselves (and the rogue eraser) one of the other kids turned to me and said, “Wow, I didn’t know you laughed”.
I remember being astonished- I laughed all the time! How could someone be so wrong about me? Then I realized that these kids only saw me at school, where I was a classic early-stage nerd: shy, studious and rule-abiding. Thus: rarely laughing. In that moment, I first grasped at the idea that other people have their own versions of the world inside their heads, grown from their experiences. They wouldn’t know who I was unless I showed them.
Several years later, I realized that other kids had their own versions of imagined worlds as well. My friend and I were drawing together and she asked if her pencil crayon the right colour for her character’s skin. The character was from a world I’d invented (an elf trying to take down the oppressive ruling class of goose-riding witches, if I recall correctly) but my friend always played him in our make believe games and his voice was definitely more hers than mine.
Still, it hadn’t occurred to me that this fantasy elf would have a skin colour like my friend’s rather than like mine. In fact, until that moment it hadn’t occurred to me that we imagined the world differently. I saw that the cast members of all my beloved fantasy worlds, the Hermiones and the Keladrys, might look different filtered through other people’s minds.
As a teen, late night wandering of the internet brought me to some pro-life forums. They were full of activists with opinions in much the same flavour as my own, peppered with statistics, appeals to human rights and a sense of frustration with a mainstream unwilling to face the world’s real problems.
At the time, I believed that many of the world’s problems were all a big misunderstanding. I thought that a wave of mutual understanding swept across the planet would somehow transmute everyone’s political opinions to be like mine1. I had to reconsider this belief upon seeing people who had thought just as— if not more— deeply about an issue and arrived on the opposite side of the debate. Even with the same exact evidence in front of us, the world inside their heads might be founded on such different axiomatic assumptions that we’d still disagree.
There are many more moments in my list, but they all seem like the same realization on different scales: the world as I see it is less universal than I thought.
I’m curious about the scale of realizations yet to come, though I’m not exactly sure how to go hunting for them. Scanning my memory for new list entries, I usually try to hone in on a feeling of mental pressure, of bewilderment giving way to a realization that nothing in my model of the world that explains what is in front of me. This seems to happen most often when I listen closely to other people and hear the way their minds are different from my own. If you’d like to share how your paradigm shifts differ from mine, I’m all ears.
This is a apparently a common enough liberal fallacy that it has a Stuff White People Like entry. ↩︎
Living with memory loss is hard, I can’t reminisce about my childhood, I can hardly experience nostalgia. At least I get to make new, happy memories everyday. That’s the only thing that makes me happy and that’s enough for me.
happy fucking new year. Everyone’s talking about new year’s resolutions and getting a chance at a fresh start but I don’t know if that’s even an option for me. I understand the importance of moving forward with life but how can I simply let go of my past? Your past is what shapes you, your life experiences help you grow as a person. Sometimes holding on to something can cause more damaging than letting go but I can’t abandon my past self. Although the few memories that I have are quite melancholic I still feel a sense of comfort looking back at my childhood. One of the reasons why I write this is to help myself remember incase I forget. The entirety of my childhood is extremely blurry, I only know as much as I do about my past because of files on me, medical records, videos, pictures, old journals and stories other people have told me. I can’t really experience nostalgia because I barely have anything to look back on. It feels like there’s something very important that I don’t remember, it’s like I’m missing something. According to professionals my memory loss was likely caused by something traumatic, I know that by blocking out my memories my brain is protecting me but if something that horrible happened that it caused me lose my memory I would like to know. I feel so awful, it’s because of a past event that I can’t let go. Why should I have to feel bad? I was just a child, I still am just a child and I couldn’t do anything about it. I was helpless, small and terrified, I know exactly who to blame. I’m done feeling inferior and scared all the time I’m fucking angry now. He is the reason that I’m so fucked up. He’s the reason why I constantly feel like something’s missing. He is one if the main causes of my addiction. He is why I’m stuck in the past. He is the source of my issues. He can live without any consequences while I’m stuck like this, normally I would never wish ill intentions on someone but he deserves it. I want him to hurt like I hurt. I want him to know what it feels like to be small, weak and terrified. If I really take the time to think about it, the overwhelming rage that I feel is pointless, what can I possibly do now? These are the kinds if things that make me wish I was never born.
I’m lost. I’ve been struggling with mental health issues and trauma ever since I can remember, living is a chore. It all started when I was -actually scratch that- since I was born everything pretty much went to shit, I basically grew up in the hospital. When I wasn’t in the hospital I was at school where I would get bullied every single day, to add to that the teachers and staff were physically abusive. The worst part of that was I couldn’t even tell anybody because I wasn’t able to soeak the language that was being taught, if I were to speak my native language I would be punished. It was awful. The only place left where I could feel safe was at home but I guess that was too much to ask for from my deadbeat dad. Luckily I was never physically hit or abused at home but I’d be lying if I told you I grew up in a happy household. I’m not sure if this is a good or a bad thing but I can’t remember most of my childhood, according to doctors I have trauma induced memory loss along with other diagnoses. I know you’re probably thinking “She’s just trying to be edgy and shit, what an attention whore”. Before you make any assumptions about me know that I’m professionally diagnosed, not that there’s anything wrong with being self diagnosed. Just because some stupid kids decided that having depression is quirky it doesn’t give people the right to invalidate others mental illnesses. All that to say if you have any negative opinions about me or my blog please keep them to yourself, I’m not writing all of this shit to start drama. I’m writing this because I want people to have something they relate too and know that they’re not alone, that and it’s my only healthy coping mechanism. Just so we’re clear, I’m not looking for anyone’s pity. That said I can barely think anymore i’ll write to you hopefully tomorrow.
My dad was a plumber. The majority of his friends were blue collar – construction workers, bikers, and truckers. We had cb radios in the house and in every vehicle. My mom met her second husband on the cb. It was a central part of our lives.
That radio has been featured in a couple of stories over the years. Once when I was 10 or 11 Daddy had a bunch of friends over. I was bored and trying to…
I have a huge family. My parents were each from families of five children. So there were lots of cousins. My grandmother wanted my brother and me to know our cousins. So every summer for a few years – I believe it was like five but the memories are so infused into my childhood that I am not sure, she would drive us out to my aunt’s farm to visit. Mom has three…
To start this story I need to explain something. I lived in a two-bedroom trailer with often ten or more people. We did not have running water. We lived a mile back in the woods. There were always animals…dogs, birds, cats…But this story focuses on one cat. The cat that left a lifetime mark on me. B.c. which was short for bad cat. He wasn’t bad. He was…
