I haven't written any essays for school yet, but I generally gear them all towards AR. Since I read so much about it, I have a lot to say in that one area!
Here is one of my fave vegan pieces. The prompt was weird, we had to write 3 vignettes that were different yet showed some sort of progression (specifically growing up), with one object that changed as the story went on. I stretched it somewhat, but I was the only person in the class to get an A
1. Crazy
It is October 2007. The computer room at Kristina's house reeks, just like the rest of them do. Mama doesn't like me being her friend.
Kristina says, hey, you know about peta2, they have this crazy point system for going to protests and things like that. You just lie about it and get free stuff. They're all crazy. They all think that you can't eat meat or milk or stuff like that.
I ask, yeah, you can decide not to eat meat, but what's wrong with milk?
Kristina says, well you should join them to get the free stuff, but you can't become them. Vegans are crazy. You shouldn't even be vegetarian, it's not healthy at all. You could get really sick. Girls need more iron than guys, and girls need to eat meat to get iron.
But there's nothing wrong with not eating meat, Kristina. You can certainly eat meat if you want, but I don't have to.
Look at the posts on the forum, Lisa. They are all about helping animals. Animals don't care, and it doesn't even matter anyway because you still have to eat meat. Peta is insane.
When I go home, I sit on my bed in my messy room shared with my little sister. She's only 5, and Mama never believes that the mess is hers not mine.
2. Sorry
It is July 2008. And everything else is awful.
I hadn't been on the boards very much, I had only really been on the boards to get points and I thought it wasn't worth going on every day, because it's just takes too long. But I wish I had, and I wish I had decided earlier. This is dispicable, I cannot beleive that I ever thought it was ever okay. I could've never known how devoid of compassion I am.
I thought they were crazy. And I went to the library and checked out volumes about them, about how only eating vegetables is better for the environment and how it is healthier and how the calf is murdered for his mother's milk. I suppose I was naive enough to think that just because you don't eat someone's flesh, that it doesn't make them suffer and die. Because of me. I couldn't get past the first 60 pages of the first book I picked up, The Ethics of What We Eat by Peter Singer. And oh, it's not just the cows, it's the mastitis and the confinement and the drugs and the recklessness and the chickens, the pigs, the fish.
And I can never take back what I have done, all I can do is move forward and try to cut it out. But mama wouldn't let me, even though she's vegetarian, she has told me before about that one patient of hers that died from being vegan. Maybe I'll just try for this week, and tell her later. But no, we're going to Rachel's wedding on Saturday, and she'll know it when she sees me not eating. But how will she ever let me change? Maybe I'll try for this week, then next Saturday I'll eat the cheese and then Sunday I will tell her. Yeah, that sounds good.
I look down from my bed at the floor. She still doesn't beleive me that it's not my fault that the room is messy. She said, even if it were your little sister's fault, you still have to clean it up.
3. Love
It has been more than a year. A year of no excuses, of no regrets, of liberation. I feel as though I know a little bit of truth, and yet no one beleives this truth, as simple as it may be. That's okay, I'm still singing it.
I started because of all the stories of torture and slavery. And yeah, I still am fighting for that, much more than last year, but I understand on a deeper level, too. That no one has a right to take the life and freedom away from anyone else, especially when it is so easy to live a kinder existance. It really hit me as I watched a documentary in science class, about the birds who live in nests that take three weeks to make from strings of their saliva. As it showed people harvesting, or should I say stealing? the birds' nests, I found myself saying, no, you can't do that, you have no right to take her home. She, the animal, has rights.
They ask us where we get our protein, and if we are anemic, and if we miss eating someone else's body, and if we really think we are doing any good. I try not to let my passion display itself as anger. I am here to educate them, to show them how to live more kindly.
If Kristina Pike and I were still friends, she would call me crazy. I ask her, who is more sane?
I sit on my bed. I have my own room now, and it's clean.