Came back from a place where I was sure it was over. It is crazy how much you really want to live life when faced with it being taken away. Your mind comes up with all kinds of ways you might be able to get through this, make things better.
I did decide almost suddenly while I was going through this last agony that I needed to be vegetarian, that to have any respect for myself I could no longer if I had a choice be a part of something that caused pain and death to any living animal. It feels truly horrible to be faced with your own death and to feel completely powerless against it, and to be in that much pain. How do I know what those animals feel when they know they’re about to die and they’re screaming (which they do), and they are hurting? My life and my suffering has been judged and weighed to be less than shit by those who are doing this to me, just the same. I would be such a hypocrite and I wouldn’t have the right to say anything to those who torture me, when I know myself that I have the power to take away suffering from living beings. I hope I don’t sound sanctimonious, but how else do I say this? Pain is horrible. To cause pain to a living being, I had better have a good reason, if I’m going to be able to look at myself. If I’m going to ignore the pain of another living being, because I’ve been conditioned to think I am better than them or they are inferior, then aren’t I doing the same thing they do to me?
I saw photos of cow carcasses skinned and hanging by their feet in refrigerators and I felt like I almost could know what that felt like, to feel that powerless, to have your death be that meaningless and casual and part of a machine.
I’ve been brainwashed to think of vegetarians as militant idiots so I’m reading what I’m writing and thinking I sound like that, as if just by virtue of comparing your life to an animal’s you must be a moron. Uggh.
