A Painful Awareness

I’ve always managed (somehow) to put aside any judgemental feelings towards meat eaters or carnists as they are more recently classed as. But over the last year or so, especially since reading ‘Eternal Treblinka – The Holocaust and Our Treatment Of Animals’ by Charles Patterson, I have been unable to respond, react, or involve myself within our society. It pains me tremendously, that those few whom I do have contact with (because of my situation a carer to my Mum) I cannot ‘connect’ or gel with them on deep levels. They have become an extended family to me because they share very personal ad emotional times with Mum as I do. They care for her with almost as much intimacy as I do. And this makes for a very upsetting situation for me a times.

 

However….being confined for 80% of the time with mum, bar a carer meeting once a month (which I am now also shying from)  I have found a strange peace in the company of dementia.  I have virtually nothing to do with a ‘workplace environment; something that when I still held down two jobs, was already becoming hard to bear because I felt so much of an outsider. Needless to say, I am the only Vegan in town. I’ve been ridiculed and threatened by the local butcher who whines or squeals like a dying pig when I walk past. I have been cautioned by the local Police for chalking ‘offensive’ messages around town.  Well, I would suggest that messages of love, hope, and useful websites are far less offensive than the note the butcher stuck in his window directed at me after he had to peel EARTHLING stickers from his door, suggesting I had mental health problems and that I was a ‘Hitlerite’.

I recently found out that vegans are protected under Article 9 of the Human Rights Law and veganism is regarded as a belief system rather than dietary. theivra (International Vegan Rights Alliance) has also fuelled me with hope that perhaps finally we are being recognised and our campaigning and concern for our fellow non human earthlings is completely selfless and compassionate.