Day seven.

It’s been an interesting week.

I certainly feel like I am in a routine now. My friend Jai helped ramp me up on cooking the other night. We made something tasty and cheap out of potatoes, spinach, cream cheese, and some herbs. We also pulled up a PETA snuff film called “Meet Your Meat”.

I honestly don’t know if I can ever go back. How could I? I feel bad enough as is with dairy now, but how could I ever contribute in any way, shape, or form to genocide on a scale that by most measures seems much worse than the Holocaust in both prevalence, suffering, and severity?

I feel ignorant and selfish for never doing the research. For listening with a slight sense of superiority as vegetarian friends explained their choice. For not understanding. For thinking the only suffering was a quick death, shorter life, and less hospitable conditions. Little did I know. Animals writhing in pain as they are hung upside down, throats slit. Being skinned and dismembered while fully conscious (and without sedatives). Boiled alive (in the hair removal tanks). Castrated. Branded. Horns and teeth ripped out. Tails cut off. Unable to move your entire miserable and short existence. Breathing fresh air for the first and last time as you ride to the slaughterhouse. Freezing and starving to death. Rampant disease. Being force-fed and pumped full of antibiotics until you cannot stand or breathe. Beating the sick by bashing them over and over against the ground using their hind legs. Over 90% with broken bones and internal hemorrhaging. Animals unable to walk off the trucks being thrown into the meat grinders.

I wanted to explode.

To think that Michael Vick is publicly tarred and feathered while countless “hard working Americans” are lionized for the most unspeakably horrific and vile crimes ever committed against living creatures makes me beyond disgraced to be human.

The fact that my decision can save a hundred animals a year is but a small comfort compared to the billions of animals who go through such unimaginable suffering. Even on an environmental level meat is incredibly destructive. 2500 gallons of water per pound of beef, Brazilian rainforest (the lungs of the planet) burned for cattle ranches. Hell, the poor across the globe starve to death while we feed cows an incredible majority of all the grains.

Like I said, it’s been an interesting week. I learned a lot about the reasons “why” I should be a vegetarian. I also learned a lot about how people respond. Yesterday my boss laughed at me and asked if I was stupid for giving up meat after learning about my plan (keep in mind that we joke around all the time and have a very good relationship, so I was not really offended). Still, I have noticed that most people don’t get it. They think I am crazy. It puts me on the defensive and before I know it, I launch into a speech as to why they are so wrong for eating meat. I never realized how easy it is to play that stereotypical role. Most vegetarians I have known have been cool and confident with their choice. They don’t pressure meat eaters to convert, despite the stereotype. They don’t cause a stir. I never realized how much they have to hold back. How calm and collected they are. I never realized how hard it must be for them, or how easy it is to preach.