Evil Pink Teddy Bears

I don't hate Valentines Day.
The idea of a time to celebrate the ones we love. An excuse to shout from the rooftops the extent to which we care for the people in our lives. A time to love and be loved. Love, in any form, drives our interactions - whether it be familial, friendly, or romantic - it connects us and pushes us to be better people. Why shouldn't we celebrate that?

But, what I do hate is the consumerism that surrounds Valentines Day. It is the commodity of the event that has conditioned me to be bitter and roll my eyes at any mention of it. On January 2nd the grocery store turned into a sea of pink. New Years was over and done with and it was time to remind us just how much we need to buy helium filled heart-shaped balloons with teddy bears on them saying "I wuv u!". Chocolate and jewellery sales skyrocket and its those fiery cinnamon hearts are suddenly everywhere.

Don't let the pink fluffiness fool you.....He's full of evil.

Suddenly Valentines isn't about the personal interaction with the people you love, but a public display of buy! Buy! BUY!

Gee doesn't this sound familiar?

Christmas traditions? BUYING THE TREE, BUYING PRESENTS, oh yeah and seeing the family, BOXING DAY  WEEK SHOPPING!

Easter traditions: BUYING THE EASTER EGGS, BUYING CHOCOLATE, something about going to church, BUYING MORE CANDY.

Our traditions have become those that involve consuming these things and have lost the ideals that the stand for.

Yes, Valentine's gifts are ways of expressing our emotions - as are most any gifts - but the sentiment can be lost by competition and the need to 'out-do' each other, or other couples or other years. Everything needs to be bigger and better or else it means nothing.

This is not to say that the entire holiday has fallen apart. I can be a hopeless romantic as much as the next person and sweet stories of love can make me a puddle of goo. But the stories that can reduce me to such a state rarely involve grandiose gifts and elaborate planning. Often they are stories of the small and subtle gestures that get me. Acts of kindness, acts of nostalgia, acts of sentiment. The things that really mean something to us beyond a commodity.

I'm rarely bitter about Valentine's day due to the fact that I'm single. I joke with my friends about "Single Awareness Day!" but never as a cry for attention. I honestly never felt like I was missing out on the roses and teddy bears. What makes me bitter about Valentine's is that the meaning has been lost to all the pinks and reds of store fronts and the constant push to shove the idea down our throats that we need to buy the biggest and best gift or our significant other won't love us anymore. The entire industry is ridiculous, sexist, classist - all to make us feel like we need their product to feel loved.

I know I sound like a Valentine's Scrooge here, but as I stated earlier - I do love the idea of expressing our love.

So, forget the stores and the candies and the nauseating teddy bears, to all the people in my life who are important to me and who put up with me, and who may not hear it enough:

I love y'all, and Happy Valentine's Day m'dears... just don't expect any gifts from me.



I don't own Lotso the bear from Toy Story 3 because I'd prefer not to be murdered in my sleep, but nonetheless you can get him here.

Let's Talk Day: Anxiety

I don't ever remember having an anxiety problem before college.

That's not to say I wasn't ever anxious. I was constantly in a state of worry and I did a lot of performance arts (dance, music) and would have 'pre-show jitters' but never anything debilitating.  I would stress, worry, and get paranoid over little things - but it was usually short lived and forgetable.

I'm not sure when exactly this changed. I was fairly shy my first semester of college and thankfully was able to find friends who quickly became close and trustworthy. In a demanding program like ours, you needed a strong support system of your peers or you die. We had lab sections for many of our classes and during exams would also have lab practicals to show the skills we'd learned beyond the theory.

This type of testing was never a strong area for me. My mind blanks under pressure and I don't like being caught off guard. Even with weeks of preparation I would still go in with sweaty palms. At the beginning it was stressful, yes, but again similar to just nerves before going on a stage.

As the first year went on, despite my overall good grades coming out of the practical portion, these nerves kept getting worse.

I remember before one nursing practical, having to wait for my name to be called and ending up sitting on the ground because I felt nauseous and dizzy. It took two of my close friends to calm me down, remind me to breath and try and calm the sudden tremors I was having. I was panicking over the practical yes, but this reaction my body was having was something also completely new to me and scared me just as much.

It felt like a switch flipped in my brain and everything was crashing down and closing in all at once and I was babbling nonsense and could physically not stop shaking.

After that, I'd hoped the case had been from sleep deprivation and the week of exams I had been suffering through, but the instance had me on edge. I was scared that it would happen again which in turn made me more anxious.

The co-op I had that summer was brutal and affirmed the growing sense of anxiety in my chest. My boss was not a pleasant man to work for. Yes the job was demanding and new, but it was manageable. My boss was not. He was intimidating, short-tempered and very demanding in his own right. Although he did rather like me as a summer student, no one was safe during any of his bad days. Every rank of seniority could and would get yelled at and tension was always high. This sort of conflict is every sort of environment my personality cannot handle. But, I needed the job and it was only for a few months. Thus, I started going to work half an hour before any one else - I would prep for the day so that when everyone arrived, everything was ready. I also did this so I could have some time to my self with my sanity before the day started. During the day, I always offered to develop radiographs as it would give me 5 minutes to sit in the dark and breathe without the fear of someone walking in. These efforts deemed futile though as almost every day I ended up going home in near tears, stressed, angry, and exhausted. My sleeping patterns turned upside down, I had indigestion constantly, a tight knot in my stomach became permanent and I stopped wanting to eat in fear that I would just throw it all back up.

I started taking mild anxiety pills if I felt particularly unstable before work as needed. They weren't any heavy prescription drug, just plant based calming tablets that seemed to help a bit. This went from every so often, to a few days a week, to popping one in every morning before I walked out the door. I hated taking them, but the second I stopped the nausea, shaking, sweating, cramps all would return.

I was angry a lot, and although much of it was directed at the job, it was also at myself for not being strong enough to take on these challenges. That summer I grew a very tough skin in terms of working conditions - but my emotional stability was shot. The verbal abuse the employees had stuck with me long after. I found myself on edge more often and smaller events would send me into a spiral downwards of anxiety and fear.

The entire thing is illogical, my body and mind reacts to the unnecessary extreme. That's what frustrates me the most. It's embarrassing and can make you feel like a coward.

A few years have past since that summer, a few more anxiety attacks along the way, but also a few moments of self-realization. I can come across as confident and present myself as laid back - but underneath there is often a version of me hitting every panic button imaginable. This is not to say that I'm in a constant state of anxiety. I often am genuinely relaxed and confident in my abilities. But there are times when an unstoppable force takes over. I know certain circumstances that can trigger the anxiety and try to avoid them, but they are not always unavoidable and that's when it gets rough.

I've never been actually diagnosed with a form of an anxiety disorder, and I don't want to be self-diagnosing and say I have something or another when I might not. I know of people who struggle with much more extreme cases of anxiety every day and that it can be much more debilitating to their activities much more than what I've described here. All I'm doing here is stating my personal experiences with the anxiety I've had and how it's affected my life. I would love to be the person who can stand up to those that push me down, or be confident enough to take risks with out dwelling on the consequences, or be the first to start a conversation with a stranger. But that's just not me.

All I can say is to allow those who are close to you in. Give yourself a support system of people you trust to tell you that you can get through this and that you are stronger than your anxiety. Someone to guide you across whatever struggles you are battling, to remind you to breathe and offer a hand to hold.

If nothing else, just know: It's okay to be scared.

Bell Let's Talk Day: "Talking about mental health is the first step in making a difference in the lives of all Canadians."

Because I knew you, I have been changed For Good.

Today I had to say goodbye to one of my best friends.
She was small, not the sharpest tool in the box and many would cringe when I talked about her.
But she was important, she was a rat, and her name was Elphie.

The name came from Gregory McGuire's book Wicked. If you are familiar with his work or with the smash hit broadway musical based off it, you will know about Elphaba. For those of you who don't know (because you have been stuck under the nearest rock for 10 years) the story is that of The Wizard of Oz as told by the Wicked Witch of the West: Elphaba Thropp. It basically turns the entire original story on its head, telling how Elphaba and Glinda met and became friends before Dorothy dropped a house on Elphaba's sister. The core of the story is that Elphaba is inherently good. She tries to use her magic to help others, but her green complexion and knack for magic make others believe she's a social menace.
My love for the book and musical aside, what does this have to do with a rat?
Well, couldn't the same thing be said? They have a history of being vermin and carriers of disease (sorry about the plague and stuff), and people are turned off by their skinny tail and piercing eyes. Any mention of rats in public is met with disdain and a shudder.
I never understood this generalization. Rats are one of the smartest rodents out there and can survive in many conditions with digestive systems of steel. They are incredibly sociable and make profound bonds with those they trust (don't believe me? I feel a certain Oscar winning Pixar movie might sway your opinion).
So, for something so smart and kind, all they receive is predisposed hate.
Now are we seeing the connection?

Elphie and her sister Sophie were welcome to the home of me and my roommate, Alyssa, in November of 2010. They two of them were our detox from school. The spare room became their playground. Alyssa's clothes rack became their jungle gym (fit with our renditions of Mission Impossible theme playing in the background). Sophie was the larger, more dominant, adventurous and co-ordinated. Elphie on the other hand stayed small, followed her sister around, and often tried to jump head first into a wall outlet.
That room is also where I learned that Elphie probably genuinely thought she was a flying squirrel. This came about while I was lying on the ground doing homework as she ran around. I heard a few scrapes and then silence, I looked around not seeing her anywhere. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw movement on the top shelf of the empty clothes closet. The next few seconds that transpired could be likened to that of BBC Sherlock's "Reichenbach Fall". Wherein we locked eyes, I got out "no-!" before she took a leap of faith. Just like Sherlock, she plummeted, limbs scrambling outwards, except when she hit the ground, she bounced (If only Mr. Holmes was so buoyant). I was sure she had just tried to commit suicide and that all of her bones would be broken from the height of the fall. But she simply looked slightly stunned, turned around, and tried to climb back up to do it again.
The closet doors stayed shut after that.

The girls turned into 'teenagers' and started trying to eat each other so some crafty separation took place. Then before we knew it, the semester was ending, and Alyssa and I were heading our separate ways for home. She took Sophie, I took Elphie and thus ended that chapter of all of our lives.

Over the next few months, Elphie got an upgrade in her cage from nice little condo to giant mansion. Her confidence grew and her spunk along with it. I would come home to mysteriously chewed pillows, curtains, and even two viciously murdered helium balloons - all while Elphie sat by her door looking innocently at me.
She would rattle her water bottle because she knew the sound drove me up the wall, her addiction for yogurt drops almost led to a nose bleed on both of our parts and that whole "jump head first" attitude never went away.
Despite these things, she was always company. Someone to come home to after a tiring day. Someone who could cheer me up with her antics and activities.

Last spring, I got word from Alyssa that Sophie had quite suddenly gone downhill and she wasn't going to make it much longer. It took us both by surprise and hit us hard because they both had been so healthy and Elphie continued to act as lively as she had ever been.
It wasn't until quite a few months later, as summer came to an end, that I started seeing a change in Elphie's behaviour. Quite small at first: a little trip here, a little face-plant there. Nothing overly noticeable at first because honestly she had never been the most co-ordinated rat. But it started to happen more often, and she started looking more stiff as she ran up and down her stairs.

Things really got weird when she started cuddling with me. No, really. Normally, while I'd have her out she would always be off sniffing things, hiding places, jumping off other things. But she refused to ever just sit in my lap or hands. Sometimes she would last 30 seconds on my shoulder, but only to calculate her best trajectory to jump - I swear she trying to live up to her name with this whole Defying Gravity method acting.
But as winter approached she started curling up in my lap, or snuggling into my side, even started falling asleep. It was during these times where I saw more grey fur, her muscle tone disappearing and her arms stained from wiping red tears. She was turning into a little old lady.
But a goddamn spunky little old lady. She would be that woman walking down the street with a walker, and when you offered to help her with her bags, she would spit her dentures in your face and hobble away laughing.

This is where it became hard for me. Her body was telling her to slow down but her brain was still telling her YOU SHALL FLY ONE DAY MY PRETTY. It became a matter of quality of life. She still seemed to be enjoying her senile self, even if her limbs decided not to cooperate some days.
Things started to get truly rough for both of us a few weeks ago. She stopped being able to hold her food as her arthritic front paws could no longer grip the seeds. She was smart though and would invent ways of propping up the food for her to just face plant into and munch on. A few more choking instances later, and seeds were removed from her diet. After a particularly scary coughing fit last week while I was skyping with Alyssa, hand feeding soft food was the new rule. After that, serious problems came into effect: incontinence, loss of control of bowels, seizures, phlegm, upper respiratory infection. To the point where all she wanted to do was curl up in my housecoat with me and sleep all day.
I told her many times that it was okay to just let go, but her eyes told me "but mom, I could still flyyyyyyyyyyyy".
I hoped that she would just go in her sleep - and a few times I thought she did. She got told off afterwards for sleeping with her eyes open. But, a decision had to be made, her quality of life was not what it once was.

And so we reach today. I'm happy to report she was feisty to the bitter end. She bit me, escaped her cage twice, tried to jump off the exam table at the vet (maybe this time we fly??!) and almost bit the vet.  She put on a brave face even as her lungs were giving out on her. In the end, she went quickly and quietly and had her favourite treat by her side.

When I step back, it can seem a little silly to put so much effort and care into a tiny rodent. Call me crazy, but it I don't think it was silly at all. She had every bit the personality of a cat or dog or horse (and probably more brains than some of those) and taught me many lessons about life and living life to the fullest - even if that means jumping head first into the unknown.

I like to think that right now she and her sister surrounded by the aroma of yogurt drops and are leaping off of whatever mystical clouds they're hanging out on and are finally defying gravity.

"It may well be, that we will never meet again
In this lifetime, So let me say before we part
So much of me, Is made from what I learned from you
You'll be with me, Like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine, By being my friend."

-Elphaba, "For Good", Wicked