09.19.07

Three Simple Words

Posted in Rants at 4:32 am

I noticed that this week is the three-month mark for my little vegetarian experiment. At the outset, I’d stated that my initial planning was to take it only for two months, but that I was then inspired to go as long as I could. That remains true. I’ve dedicated myself quite well, and rediscovered a few foods I’d actually forgotten that I liked; and now, I’ve determined that the trial phase is hereby over. The transitional period is behind me. The change, barring a medical concern, is permanent.

It was a very simple event in the store Monday evening that convinced me that this is not just a passing thing. When I’d started out, I would pass through the aisles and gaze longingly at all the foods that were arrayed; chicken and beef and pork were everywhere, and I did have a strong desire for those things. Monday evening, I reached into the frozen section, picking up what I thought was a five-cheese lasagna. I saw that I had in fact picked up the regular, meat lasagna next to it, and reacted with instant revulsion. No hesitation, no thinking– I literally tossed it back into the case and made sure to grab the correct item. It wasn’t a learned response, either; it was instinctual, immediate, unhesitating. I suppose I should say that I had had that particular kind of lasagna before, and liked it; now, however, it might as well have been labeled “rat poison”.

I’m not going back. I can’t go back, can’t bring myself to go back. It doesn’t scare me for a single second, the thought of never again eating meat. It used to– during lean times when I was in college, I did in fact have a similar diet, only with less actual healthy things– but, and I’m not entirely sure why, it doesn’t anymore. If anything, it comforts me.

I’d said back in the beginning that this decision was not due to some mystical connection to living things, was for no reason other than myself. It still is, but the reason why it’s for myself has changed in a very fundamental way. Before, I had said that I wanted to stop eating meat so that my weight would drop. It did; slowly but surely, my weight has gone down to near the levels it was at in May of 2006 (when I ended my first stab at the diet/exercise run due to E3)– if anything, the fact that it’s gone down slowly has made me feel more confident about the validity of the choice. I’m still partly doing it for the weight benefit, but there’s more to it now.

The past few days, behind the scenes, I’ve been taking a pretty critical look at myself and the way I live my life. I took a look at the way I am now, and the way I used to be in college, and even then the way I used to be in high school, and I wonder what caused me to change so greatly between those periods. It was one of those things about me that baffled me to no end; my first reaction was that I was simply growing up, but I knew that wasn’t the case. On the same instinctual level that caused me to eject the meat lasagna, I knew that there was some other reason for my personality shift between those three periods. The reason is actually maddeningly simple.

It was because I cared what people thought.

That of course is the overdramatic, one-sentence, potentially-misleading version. What I mean, really is that I cared far too much about how my actions, appearance, and my self were perceived by other people. Of all of those things, I really only had control over my actions. (I’m referring to external actions here, like cutting someone off in traffic. The fact that I put ten blankets on my bed during the dead of winter is an example of an internal action– a personal habit that’s my business alone.) The elements of my self that make me feel like I am who I am– that is, my identity– that’s my business. People don’t have a right to judge me based on things which are my preferences and my personality quirks. I have as much a right to peaceful self-expression as anyone else on this planet.

Which, in the past, worked so well with my tendency to put others before myself. I know I’ve said these things before. I just never actually applied them to myself. Yeah, I had a net self-worth somewhere in the negative zillions. The funny thing is, I don’t recall ever actually feeling that way prior to college. The profound despair that I began feeling about midway through my sophomore year, wasn’t there before. In high school I was unstoppable. I was confident in myself and in my abilities, and I could not easily be swayed or cowed out of a decision by my peers. I had control over my situation and I knew who I was.

Then, in college, everything changed. I was alone and off on my own, and I had no real frame of reference, nothing where I felt safe, no anchor. There was nothing where I could say, “this is me, and this cannot change”. I was shifting my definition of self because I was trying to find a group to fit in with. Everything changed quickly, and pretty soon I suppose I was awfully unpredictable. That internal chaos just confounded me further, eroding my confidence and self-worth as the things I did which I tried to use to define me, failed or blew up in my face. I didn’t deal with failure well. It was a horrific cycle.

This week, I don’t know why, but I just gave up. I wasn’t in any kind of funk– things are going quite swimmingly– I just had had enough. There was a line drawn around me then, metaphorically. “This is me,” I said. “This cannot change. If you have a problem with it, then that’s too f(rack)ing bad, because you just have to deal with it.” I made a promise, a three word mantra: No more hiding. No more concealing who I am or my interests or my style just to gain favor. No more dropping a line of conversation just to avoid a disagreement. No more suppressing an emotion or an impulse just because I’m not ’supposed’ to feel it then. I’m letting my inner geek out. I’m embracing and exploiting and exulting in my natural ADHD. I am once again taking up the stance, “Unstoppable Willpower”.

So, yeah. No more hiding. No more meat. It feels like it’s the right thing to do, so I’m doing it. I am sure there won’t be any problems with this.

And if you’re thinking that this is going to turn me into some kind of self-righteous asshole who doesn’t care about how his actions affect other people, you really do not know me that well. I’m still me. I’m still as compassionate, calm, rational, intelligent, and sensitive as I ever was. I’m just not going to be quiet, mousy, invisible, terrified, or repressed for a single second longer.

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