Since March of 2008, I have been a vegan. I came to this decision after trying out vegetarianism. I woke up one Monday in December of 2007 having realized that I hadn't eaten any flesh the previous day. I decided to try it again, and succeeded. After a week, I started feeling pretty good about it. My friends derided me about it at times, my girlfriend at the time gave me some guilt for it, but I persevered, making it through Christmas dinner at mom's without any meat.
By January, I felt very good about my decision to stop eating meat, but I occasionally would eat some seafood, one time having a tuna steak at a southern-style restaurant in Beaumont, another time trying a piece of shrimp in my girlfriend's Pad Thai. I still ate cheeses, drank milk, used butter in my cooking, and ate plenty of eggs, but I was glad to eschew flesh.
I was at the healthiest point of my life, including daily 5k's and no smoking or drinking. It was easy to do this working for the Salvation Army in Beaumont, a city where I knew no one from my previous life as a fast-food eating, beer-drinking, cigarette-smoking, drug-using jazz musician in Houston. I had really turned my life around.
At some point in late February, I decided to do a little research, and I found myself watching videos taken from hidden cameras in slaughter houses, as well as reading a lot about the nutritional benefits of eschewing all animal products altogether. I wrestled with it for a little bit, but kept researching. I finally found myself at a point where I had to choose, and my bleeding heart made me choose in favor of all animals, of perfect health, of environmental responsibility. I went to my kitchen and tossed everything that came from animals into the trash.
Eight months later I was at a raw vegan festival in Sedona, AZ. Sedona was absolutely beautiful, everyone was very kind, the food was delicious, and there was just an aura of profound change surrounding the entire campground. Although there was turmoil in my personal life, I was in a very happy place, and I knew that my decision to be vegan was the absolute right way, and I would never falter.
Returning from the trip, my girlfriend, who had turned vegan with me, left me for a man who she had cheated on me with. I had quit my job and was working at a coffee shop in Houston, living with an old friend in a modest apartment. Things started to turn back to their old ways... I started smoking cigarettes, drinking, smoking pot, and being all around lazy and unproductive, wasteful even... but I continued to be vegan.
At work, there were other vegans who I enjoyed working with at times, but were extreme in their beliefs. Some were activists and protesters, but some were animal liberationists, and most did not approve of my lack of activism. It couldn't be a personal choice, it had to be some kind of mission. I wasn't willing to picket animal shelters, or hand out flyers at KFC, or even give up my perfectly good leather wallet that I'd had for years before my switch to veganism. It was due to this that I found myself growing distant from other vegans.
As things in Houston started to change for the better, I didn't falter in my food choice, I just bought higher quality vegan food. I was willing to spend hundreds of dollars on my grocery trips just to be able to cook things that tasted like the food I had craved before my switch. I made vegan lasagnas, vegan cheeseburgers, vegan casseroles, the whole nine yards. I would be eating my homemade dishes at the table across from my roommate, who ate his Whataburger or Jack in the Box bacon double cheeseburger without the fear of being talked down to about his food choice; I had promised myself to never be evangelist about my choice.
Something started to bother me, though. This feeling of being "the only one" like me, of being all alone in my endeavor, started to wear on me. I knew there were other vegans, but if they were like the ones I'd met or read, I knew we wouldn't get along. I had tried to date other vegans, but I wasn't able to make it work. I even signed up for a meetup group and never went to a single meetup. The social aspect of veganism was insurmountable. If I could only meet someone like me, someone who just eats vegan without all the drama.
Instead, I found someone who was willing to eat vegan, although she wasn't herself. We had known each other since music school at U of H, but we decided to meet for coffee in December of 2009. Anh was really a Christmas present from the universe. We made each other happy, we helped each other out, and we went on a number of great trips together, to Austin, Dallas, and Las Vegas. She ate vegan with me, she drank with me, she came to all of my piano bar outings, and she taught me a lot about playing pool.
I told her about being tempted to eat animal products again, she listened, and we talked about all the things that would be delicious for me to eat, in the healthiest order to eat them, starting with sushi and ending with bacon. Ever since that conversation, I've heavily considered moving away from veganism. Every day, I wrestle with the desire to eat a Whataburger taquito, or a chicken sandwich, or even just the vegetarian products that have ended up in my freezer that aren't vegan.
Today, as I sat on my porch and had my first cigarette of the day, I had a realization; I have never believed in something as much as I've believed in veganism, and this was in direct conflict with almost all of my views in life. I bow to no religion, but I do not agree with Atheism. I side with no political parties, but I do not agree with Libertarianism or Socialism. I do not understand a need for Sexism, or Racism, or really any "ism" in the world. These "isms" are, in so many ways, what is wrong with the black-and-white spoon-fed society that we live in.
Although I have believed in veganism as a diet, I haven't seen a need to believe in the movement as a whole, as detailed by my lack of activism and trusty leather wallet. Perhaps it is time to drop the "ism" and stop limiting myself to a single food source. Perhaps there are more lessons to be learned in dropping the ism. Which brings me back to the very beginning of this post, an image that I saw in my head that prompted these words:
