Remembered that I hate the Seafood Department today
I'm not a squeamish person. Or, so I thought. I found (well, rediscovered) my Achilles heel today. The Seafood department in grocery stores.
I can handle blood, guts, fires, gunshots, emergencies, you name it. But I watched a lobster, still moving, albeit sluggishly, get weighed by a smiling man, then wrapped it up in paper and handed to a woman, laughing casually at a joke. My head began to feel like it was spinning. I tried to shrug it off and glanced around - which didn't help at all - and saw a display of fish, all looking up with dead eyes.
I mumbled about finding the seafood off-putting, trying to get a handle on my head.
My husband asked, "Which part?"
I glanced at three, gigantic tanks strung together, all ridiculously filled with crabs, standing on one another, moving around the confined containers, some of the more alert ones looking around.
I quickly said the first words my mind could grasp, which was, "All of it," before bolting for the produce to stare at some cherries until the nausea went away.
I couldn't say what exactly gets to me, but ever since I was a kid I've been unable to take it.
I'm not a vegetarian. I was for a year once, more for kicks than anything else, definitely not out of any noble reasons on behalf of animals.
I think the lobster did me in though. Grinning faces juxtaposed with some living thing slowly writhing, close to death, put in a neat little wrapper... yep, already feeling a bit light-headed just typing that.
The smiling faces just throw my mind for a complete loop.
And the absolutely WEIRD part in all of this, is that if it were (god forbid) a different life form, I think I could be horrified and move on. Roll into some good, righteous anger. But lobsters, fish, and crabs are thoroughly under the 'food' category mentally, so I just don't know how to process feelings of sympathy, and I assume empathy; though I cut my imagination short before it can even go there.
I can handle blood, guts, fires, gunshots, emergencies, you name it. But I watched a lobster, still moving, albeit sluggishly, get weighed by a smiling man, then wrapped it up in paper and handed to a woman, laughing casually at a joke. My head began to feel like it was spinning. I tried to shrug it off and glanced around - which didn't help at all - and saw a display of fish, all looking up with dead eyes.
I mumbled about finding the seafood off-putting, trying to get a handle on my head.
My husband asked, "Which part?"
I glanced at three, gigantic tanks strung together, all ridiculously filled with crabs, standing on one another, moving around the confined containers, some of the more alert ones looking around.
I quickly said the first words my mind could grasp, which was, "All of it," before bolting for the produce to stare at some cherries until the nausea went away.
I couldn't say what exactly gets to me, but ever since I was a kid I've been unable to take it.
I'm not a vegetarian. I was for a year once, more for kicks than anything else, definitely not out of any noble reasons on behalf of animals.
I think the lobster did me in though. Grinning faces juxtaposed with some living thing slowly writhing, close to death, put in a neat little wrapper... yep, already feeling a bit light-headed just typing that.
The smiling faces just throw my mind for a complete loop.
And the absolutely WEIRD part in all of this, is that if it were (god forbid) a different life form, I think I could be horrified and move on. Roll into some good, righteous anger. But lobsters, fish, and crabs are thoroughly under the 'food' category mentally, so I just don't know how to process feelings of sympathy, and I assume empathy; though I cut my imagination short before it can even go there.