When vegans attack: domestic edition.

My filter failed again last night when Red told me he wasn’t going to continue to be vegan once his challenge ends on Tuesday. “You’re not?” I asked. He said (and he says it better than I can here) that he’s gonna give the vegetarian gig a shot. Now, this is a huge change from his current omni diet, and I should have been dancing on tables and covering him with kisses in my excitement. But, for whatever sorry-ass reason, all I could see was (what I perceived to be) his rejection of veganism as a lifestyle. Never mind that I too was once a loud-and-proud vegetarian, who slurped ice cream and flipped omelets and regularly deployed my friend Jess’ method for making the perfect grilled-cheese sandwich. No. I, in my myopia, was sad that three weeks of veganism had failed to convince my husband to quit animal products cold tofu.

Do you see how moronic I was being? Do you? LAME, Burnout, very lame. Y’all, what is wrong with me that I tear up over pictures of baby cows but then try to engage my husband in a philosophical argument about the supreme logic of veganism when he’s already made the major decision to go vegetarian? Vegetarians, I’m sorry. I try not to let the holier-than-thou gremlin out of her cage too often, but I was weak last night, and not as compassionate as I wanted to be. There are lots of differences between Red and me in the ways we experience food, and I failed to put myself in his place when I was huffing in frustration about how eating eggs and dairy still dooms animals to slaughter. He’s doing the best he can, and has made huge strides. I’ve told him that I don’t want him to do any of this for me, that if he does he’ll only end up resentful and hungry. He has to make these changes on his own schedule. I’m proud of him, but I sure did a shitty job of showing it last night.


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