Hate to Love You

Soo… Today my blog is going to be something in which you'll learn something about me (more than you readers normally do in my posts). I've been doing quite a bit of thinking today to try to discover my inner contradictions. I was trying to come up with an original one and not one that was given to me in class until I realized that what I'm most guilty of is something that my teacher brought up in class.

I bet you're all so curious as to what this contradiction I've come to identify with is. Well, let me start by saying: animals. Am I right! They're so hard to hate, unless you've had a traumatic experience with one as a child. Even if you're allergic them, your first reaction to seeing a dog when walking down the street tends to be something along the lines of…

Now I consider myself an animal lover. I also like clothes. Can you see the connection between the two? Where this is going? Yes? No? I can't see you through the computer so I'll assume you know nothing and continue hinting. I have a leather backpack for school, as well as many leather jackets, purses, and coincidentally I am also wearing leather shoes right now. Whenever I see a leather jacket I tend to just stop like:

I know it's terrible and as an animal lover I shouldn't purchase leather products; it isn't benefitting any creature in the least. I'm not going to give up one or the other because it's whats in your heart that counts, yet I still have felt bad. In the past I've bought vegan leather (whatever that is) in order to balance out my unhealthy leather obsession with my love of animals. Then I'll walk through a store and spot that one item and I think "maybe it's vegan" and take it home only to find it isn't. 

Whoops. What I'm getting at is it's not possible to maintain a life without contradictions, whatever they are. Besides, some animal activists aren't vegan but have to eat meat because their diet requires it, not because they want to. That may work against me since my contradiction isn't live-or-die, but nevertheless I've come to terms with it. I'm not going to say "I'll choose one, I love leather so much I suppose instead of loving animals I should hate them and get rid of my own pets." No, no, no. NO. And most of my leather is secondhand; someone bought it before me and got rid of it. I didn't buy it straight from manufacturers, I just kept it from being thrown out. Whatever the matter, I've come to live with it and when my pets see me wearing leather, they don't seem too upset.