Inanimate Emotions

One of the first blogs I checked out this morning was Trixie's, and I connected so easily with her Tags post that I had to blog my response instead of just leaving an uber-long comment. Trixie said: "It's insane, but I've worried about hurting the feelings of inanimate objects ever since I was a child." Umm, hello! I'm sure she'll get dozens of comments on her site from other people saying hey, yeah, me too!

I've always had issues with inanimate objects. To the point where, when buying something at a store, I will buy the first item I picked up, thinking it somehow called me to it and I was meant to buy *that particular one*--even if it is somehow damaged or not as quality as others. Because if *I* don't buy the damaged item, possibly nobody will, and I might have been its only chance. ARG! Talk about silly OCD habits.

I have a stuffed animal, an old old cat, that I asked my mom to buy me at a garage sale when I was younger than I can remember. I can tell this stuffed cat is old because it's made with real fur (I'm thinking white rabbit), with button eyes and a stitched on mouth and pink felt ears. Well, it used to have ears. One is torn in half, and the threads of the mouth are loose; nevermind the stains in the fur. And that was the condition I bought it in! I saw it and fell in love with it at first site (it's sooo soft) and new that if I didn't take it home there was the chance that nobody else would, and the rabbit-furred stuffed cat would be all alone, probably end up in the garbage. How could I bare that guilt?! I don't think I could ever get rid of that cat at this point.

This feeling was *SO* not helped by the Toy Story movies... the first of which came out when I was 11. Can you imagine, here I was, already overly paranoid of the emotions of my possessions (and could they really be "my possessions" if they had emotions?...) when suddenly in all it's CG glory this movie confirmed that toys would come to life as soon as they were out of site and showed all the stress they went through from humans playing with them. I always felt so bad about keeping my stuffed animals in my mom's old large wicker laundry hamper after that—all piled on top of eachother in that dark space. And the Velveteen Rabbit story didn't help much either.

Then Trixie conjectured, "The really "funny" part is that I don't seem nearly as sensitive about hurting PEOPLE'S feelings." Which made me wonder if there was a relation, between the hyper-paranoia of inanimate emotions and the lackadaisical treatment of other humans. Because anyone who has known me for an extended period of time will know that I tend to push my awareness of others' emotional states to the back of my mind, if only to make my actions and choices easier for me. How twisted that must seem, that I will buy a ring with a flaw to make sure it feels appreciated yet I will easily ignore how my actions influence a person's emotions.