Falling into Spite, or How I Became Vegan

"So, I guess our first posts should be...why we became vegan? Is that cool?"

Of course, it was cool, and Harris is right that an introduction is needed, but I would be lying if I told you a part of my stomach didn't turn to ice. Why did I become vegan? I began asking my friends for a good story on veganism I could make up so I wouldn't bore you guys with the banality of my story, but the only real idea I got was from my father, who suggested between laughing spells that I say I was dumped by a man named EGAN and wanted to be closer to him, so I became VEGAN.

 This suggestion continues to send him into delirious joy and self satisfaction four days later. Tells you a bit about the stock I come from.

Turns out that my dad's idea is half right. I did become vegan after a breakup. In November of 2005, a relationship came to an end (not for long, but that's another article) and though I was unmistakably miserable with the guy, I still felt rudderless and lost. Like so many afraid to blossom into adulthood, I had chosen a partner to "take care of" to the detriment of developing my own interests, so when the bottom fell out, I found myself with no defining edges to my personality and no interests of my own. Now, I had the formidable task of constructing my  identity at 27 years old. With what? I had a dead end job, lived with my parents, had not kept in touch with friends,  smoked three packs of cigarettes a day, and my biggest accomplishment in the last year had been getting all of Ulala's costumes in the Ps2 version of Space Channel Five.

This was me through most of my twenties. Only with bad skin.

 I didn't really know where to start finding things I cared about,  but I knew one thing: I loved animals, on a bone marrow, soul thread level that had never wavered since my earliest memories. The longing to be with them, to integrate them into my life beyond living with my own pets, became overwhelming--much more overwhelming than losing some dude I never much liked to begin with.  If I was going to find myself, I knew I had to first look to my soul's natural compliments, and resolve the gaping hole loss forced me to confront.

In textbook Laurie fashion, I first tried to get around direct action by stops and starts, and by "thinking" rather than doing. I bought as many books as I could afford on environmentalism and animal rights, trying to boost my confidence so I could eventually go out and find my tribe. I read Peter Singer, Christopher Manes,  Jane Goodall.  I quickly subscribed to the late, much missed Satya
Magazine, whose back issues are still the best introduction I know to living in NYC as an animal
activist. I read each issue from cover to cover several times, enthralled and inspired. Yet making the decision to go vegan was not instantaneous, even in the face of compelling arguments---far from it. Even after I had been awakened from the delusion that abstaining from meat alone was not enough,  even when I knew enough to realize that "humane meat" and "cage free" eggs were  not only inadequate appeasements to consumers but that even those meager crumbs thrown to animal welfare were largely unenforced and thus useless,  I still  started most days with an egg and cheese sandwich from my favorite deli, greasy with butter and salted to just this side of excessive.  I told myself that life was long, that there were plenty of years to go "extreme",  that once I got over the hump I would never go back, and that it was okay to take my time getting to where I wanted to be because once I got there, I was going to kick ass and bring on the revolution.   I was still on my mother's couch, still smoking and gaming my life away, and I still hadn't done anything to help animals.

Then, in 2006, somewhere around valentines day,  I read an article in Satya by Lawrence Carter-Long about a truck accident that had spilled thousands of chickens onto an unnamed highway. Chickens who had once been egg layers and were now bound for slaughter, mostly for pet food or canned soups as their bodies were too bruised and worn out for meat. The chickens had been out on the road for hours before activists could arrive. Many of them were dead, and those that were alive were terrified, injured, and unwanted.  Few of them would survive transport, if there was even space for them to be transported to.  The decision was made to euthanize the chickens so they would at least die in the
arms of someone who gave a damn instead of at the hands of an exploited slaughterhouse worker:

I forget exactly when, but at some point I stopped filling syringes and began cradling the remaining chickens—one by one—as they died. The chickens who were still alive had to be injected in the middle of their chests. One person would administer the injection, while another held the birds. The chickens, who had probably never known kindness in their short, tortured lives, would shudder at first, sometimes violently, then throw their heads over their backs and look at the person holding them while they died...

How nice it must be to sit in an office, munching on McNuggets without a care in the world as to what—or who—went into making your meal.

How nice it must be to sleep through large-scale misery from the safety of your car on the sidelines.

How convenient it must be to shrug off an attempt to end suffering without getting your hands even a little bit dirty.
( Lawrence Carter-Long, I Held Them While They Died… found here: http://www.satyamag.com/feb06/carterlong.html)

If you have not clicked on this pic to be taken to the article, what the hell is wrong with you?

I don't recall crying after reading Mr. Long's article. I do recall feeling like someone had taken my insides out,  bruised them up, and put them back, and I do know that I considered myself vegan from there on out. The mind can bypass an awful lot of truth to maintain the status quo, but break the heart in enough pieces and the light has to shine through.  After reading that piece, I was on the road, and I had killed those chickens, and no amount of retroactive karma credit was going to get me out of my complicity.  At a certain point, what you think and what you believe isn't good enough if you are still living as if nothing changed.

Within a few weeks, I was volunteering at my local kill shelter walking the big dogs.  I was the worst walker they had seen in quite a while, too desperate for the pups to like me to control them. I remember crying in the bathroom a lot from humiliation because I was convinced staff thought I was stupid. Still, I stuck with it, found my mentor in a gum snapping, chain smoking Puerto Rican goddess with a foul  mouth  and a big heart,  and I stayed there for six years, fairly certain that I could walk a 65  pound pitbull through an Orc army  in flaming stilettos without breaking a sweat by the end of it.  My life is now informed first and foremost by my commitment to animals, and through my darkest moments, re-asking the question of whether I am doing enough for them (I never am) is what brings me back to center.  Far from being a lifestyle that has hampered  or deprived me, living vegan gave my soul integrity for the first time and, more than likely, saved my life.

Mine is not a story of the heart opening and never looking back, though. I have cheated plenty  of times. I still have cravings. I lapsed from consistent to sporadic volunteerism for a number of reasons and am swimming upstream to get my mojo back.  And when I read this year that injecting bee venom into the face can help the acne scars which are the official bane of my existence, I'll admit to a fleeting moment of: "fuck bees; what have they ever done for me, anyway?". This is why I am so excited to start this project with Harris, and with all of you.  A lot of vegans have been taught that there is only one way to reach people---keep it light, accessible, and repeat over and over how gross milk and eggs are and how much yummier vegan food is.  The truth of the matter is,  at least from my perspective, that veganism is hard. It is a drag. The food is a mixed bag, from phenomenally toothsome to hateful swill.  People will offer you unsolicited opinions on your dietary choices while other abstainers get congratulated and silently supported.  You will certainly be the weird kid at company functions, and some snarky wannabe who took a sociology class as an undergrad will always try and associate you with white privilege, as if having the luxury of choice doesn't mandate that we make the best ones.  But living in alignment with the wisdom of your heart is the surest path to happiness I know, and while going vegan won't guarantee you the courage to live the life you know you are capable of,  I can promise that when you do feel far from your authentic self, abstaining from that which blemishes your divine nature gives you an anchor of consistency and proves that the will to evolve  and connect exists even when all we want to do is disappear.

So, please join us on this journey through veganism , as a lifestyle, as a consumer protest, as an ethical choice, and sometimes as an ordeal that needs the  "juice" of community to get through. We hope you laugh at us and relate to our failings, and we hope we can help you avoid some pitfalls so your own path is that much smoother.  Please treat this space as your home and engage us with your thoughts, stories, and struggles.  I'll do my best to repay the inspiration I already know is out there.

If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.
- Horace Mann