Isolation

The day before one of my culture’s biggest celebrations, when family is supposed to be all together and shit, I realized I’m just... utterly alone.

I found out about a bill in Oregon that would make breeding and killing animals illegal (outside of self-defense and euthanasia) and excitedly told my wife about it. Maybe— no, I *definitely* should have expected the reaction she had. She said, “I don’t think that’s something the government should be getting involved in.” And then she went and nuked herself some frozen sausage-and-cheese burrito she’d bought somewhere.

And no, she wasn’t coming from an anarchist perspective. She clarified she was worried about the poor farmers’ and slaughterhouse workers’ ~jobs~ and how expensive vegan food supposedly is (even though NOT buying meat and milk has saved us more money than buying vegan cheese shreds, butter, tofu and so forth has cost us).

And now I just feel like an idiot. I thought I was leading by example, making delicious vegan food and showing my family that it is, indeed, possible to eat well without exploiting animals. I thought I could do this because even before I finally went vegan, I felt bad about how animals were treated, and when I saw vegans arguing with omnis online, I always thought, hey, that makes sense, the arguments people are making against them are really illogical.

But if I can’t convince the people who care about me, I don’t like my chances of convincing anyone else.

I was going to be making a vegan pumpkin pie and a dish of vegan baked mac and “cheese” as a side for Christmas dinner tomorrow, but now I’m way less excited about that than I was. Just thinking about how everyone else is going to be eating a dead bird alongside whatever I make, while they think “Oh how adorable, he thinks animals matter” or whatever.

Tags

food