I'm like an invertebrate when it comes to dead animals -- spineless

Although I did my undergrad degree in Biology, I somehow managed to avoid doing any animal dissections. Except for in one class: Physiology I. It was terrible. On more than one occasion, I ran out of the lab in tears, and spent the rest of the period dry heaving and sobbing over the toilet.

I've been vegetarian since I was 7, and I've always been really sensitive about dead animals. I hated when my mom brought me into butcher shops, and seeing roadkill on the street made me freak out. A slab of meat is difficult enough, but when its the whole body, it's even worse.

The first time I ran out of the lab, it was because I had to dissect a lobster. I couldn't understand how someone could go into a restaurant, put on a bib, and tear into it. It has eyes! And a heart! (I would list the other parts of its physiology, but I got a zero on that particular lab). Anyway, I thought that I'd grown tougher. It doesn't bother me when I go out with someone who orders meat. And although I haven't started to cook it yet, I'm sure I will eventually when I have a family.

But I opened up my freezer the other day, and wedged between my edamame beans and mango cubes was this:

It's shrimp. Besides the whole treyf angle is the fact that each time I open up my freezer, they stare at me accusingly. And say things. Bad things.

Like "Your spinach looks like the algae we used to eat...WHEN WE WERE ALIVE!!"

Or "This freezer is almost as cold as the Atlantic Ocean where we used to live...WHEN WE WERE ALIVE!"

I'm tempted to release them back into the wild. But I fear that they're not cryogenically frozen, and actually dead. And that, my friends, makes me sad.