Inconvenient Me

I am not sure I have met one person that doesn't doubt their own self worth. Even those very confident people must worry about how they are viewed. Surely they must...

Yet again, this was passed over. I wish they would tell me why they don't want to publish these things, especially when I see things like this posted on Facebook...

So I present: Inconvenient Me

There is one thing I understand about people, and that is, as a whole, they love convenience. It is part of the reason social media is so huge, it gives everyone the most convenient and easy way to “stay in touch”. All anyone has to do is slap a “Like” or “Love” on something, and they now feel a part of your life. It’s actually very voyeuristic, the way social media has made us all. We have all become strangers to each other, just watching what happens from the outside.

While I may have a pretty package most days, I have rough edges. My husband does weird things like Deployments and TDY’s… we live a nomadic, lonely kind of life, and it’s hard for people not in the military life to understand me. Honestly, I am pretty sure it is hard for people IN the military life to understand me! We have three children, and two dogs, and our house is frequently very loud and chaotic. I have no chill, handle things with little to no grace, and I swear like a sailor. Who would want to even be my friend?

I am very inconvenient.

Our boys are only thirteen months apart in age… to say the youngest was a mistake is not accurate, but he sure did arrive a bit quicker than we planned. Our daughter is some kind of old soul gifted to us by the angels, and I often find myself astounded by her. I can see why the children have as many friends as they do, and it makes my heart glad. They are the kind of people that other people will think about when they are not around. My husband is also someone people think of when he is not around, but I am not so sure people think about me when I am not around. I don’t think anyone actively thinks to themselves “I wonder what Caitlin is up to?”

This used to bother me more when I was in middle and high school than it does now. I desperately wanted to be in the popular crowd, be invited to all the parties, and do all the cool things. I wasn’t popular and I didn’t get invited to do the cool things. In middle school, I was frumpy and awkward – I had bad acne and my parents were going through a divorce. The first two years of high school I was still awkward with acne, but now my father had graduated to full blown alcoholic. Who wants to hang out with the girl whose dad is a drunk? No one. That’s who.

After my Ma rescued my sister and me from my father, the last two years of high school didn’t really go the way I had envisioned either. I discovered things like marijuana and alcohol, and let’s just say I made some bad choices. What’s more is I continued to make bad choices all the way until I was 21! My learning curve was kind of on a bad bell curve, or something... Now that I am older, I know many of those choices and actions I did were in a deeply desperate attempt to get people to like me. At best, I think I was tolerated by people. At worse, I think people hated me. I don’t blame any of those people from when I was younger for those thoughts – I didn’t really like myself.

Despite all the growth I have done in my heart and soul, I still have that nagging feeling that people just don’t care. That it is actually too hard to care. That they are too busy with more worthwhile, and interesting people. Everyone wants to be friends with that gal that can complete an Ironman, or has the means to go to Disney World all the time. Everyone want to be friends with the fashionista momma, or the makeup-mom, or the good-at-telling-jokes mom. But what about all the moms that are just wondering if you think about them? What about moms like me… that used to be the desperate girl in school everyone made fun of? Who wants to be friends with us?

.....

I want to be friends with you. I want to see all the pictures from babyhood to toddlerhood and into school age. I want to drink coffee, or a diet coke, with you and I want to laugh at how dumb we used to be when we were younger. I want to hug you when you realize your parents are aging, and we are losing our grandparents. I want to cry with you when you stumble upon that day you realize you are all done having children. I want to go to the gymnastics meets, the cheerleading competitions, the football games, and the band concerts. I want to glory in all of your mundane things you do every day, because to me they are divine.

To me, you are the friend I will always chose. You know how to do real life, and you will always be worth the text message, the phone call, or the handwritten letter. I will always keep trying to be your friend, because I know that like me you feel inconvenient. So, come along, we can be inconvenient together. 

Always.     

     

How Can You Tell if Someone is Vegan?

Don't worry, they'll tell you!

My sister is a vegan. My brother-in-law is vegan. My nieces are vegan. They are a whole damn vegan family. Their cats are not vegan though - they might be vegans, but they aren’t insane. And they aren't those vegans insisting we should all be vegan, they just accept the omnivores in their lives and move on.

I had no freaking idea what the crap a vegan was. To say I understood, or even thought it was a good idea would be a big fat lie. I thought it sounded like a totally weird thing to do, like a cult or something… after all, why would someone actively NOT eat a cheeseburger? To be honest, I still have a hang up with that, but I manage it much better these days.

I remember the first time I went out to lunch with my sister, and she ordered a vegan meal. It was around Thanksgiving one year, and I was up visiting with my father and stepmother. I was still in college, and I liked to think of myself as liberal and open minded. Yet, when my sister told me her and her boyfriend, now her husband, did not eating anything that came from an animal I was shocked. Just absolutely shocked, and I am pretty sure I tried to talk her out of it.. What a jerk! After all, this is my sister - the very first person I ever loved more than myself; I should have been supportive right away.

Her husband, my brother-in-law, has been a vegan for fourteen years! In his senior year of high school, he chose to take an Environmental Ethics course at a local community college as an elective. He told me through a text message, “The passionate teacher, who I’d go on to take two other courses from, put some emphasis on the impact of animal agriculture on our environment. Whether intentional or not, the suffering of animals also became apparent through this instruction.” With all evidence in hand, he quickly made the decision to live without animals as a part of his diet. He spent five months as a vegetarian, learned to love hummus, found courage to try tofu, and never looked back.

The main thing that bothers him is when people ask him if he “can” eat something, or when a question is phrased in a way that suggests his morals, the way he is in his heart, changes from day to day… like, if he is hungry enough, he is just going to overlook all the evidence he has found, and just eat the cheeseburger. I think, like so many things we encounter in life, their choice makes us uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable is not a state of being most people want to exist in, so we decide to become defensive. I cannot tell you how many times my sister has told me about people saying she can just eat the cheese, because no one will even know. I cannot express how heartbreaking it was to hear about the time my niece, with tears streaming down her face, asked my sister if they were still vegans because her veggie burger was cooked in bacon grease. My sweet, tender hearted niece knows other people chose to eat meat, but being a vegan is at the core of her soul. She loves it, and I think that is perfect.

According to the website, The Vegan Society, “The vast amount of grain feed required for meat production is a significant contributor to deforestation, habitat loss and species extinction. In Brazil alone, the equivalent of 5.6 million acres of land is used to grow soya beans for animals in Europe.” It doesn’t take a genius to know deforestation is kind of a bad thing, especially when this is the only planet we can live on right now. They go on further to say, “[...] considerably lower quantities of crops and water are required to sustain a vegan diet [...]” and you can't deny the truth of that. I also don’t even have time to talk about just how poor animals raised to be eaten live, even organic and “free-range” animals are not happy. Would you be happy if you were raised for slaughter?

....

I am not here to convert you to a vegan diet - I am not a vegan! For some reason, there is a weird mystique about being vegan though. It’s like one of those things that no one is really interested in unless it affects them directly. Yet, we should all be very interested in what it is, and we should learn some things from them. No. I am not saying we should all forgo our cheeseburgers and bbq chicken. I am saying open your ears and listen; be brave and check out some vegan cookbooks - my favorite is Thug Kitchen, and their stuff is delicious.

I always have my sister’s back. When people make fun of her weight, I am there to defend her. When she needs someone to be mad at, I am there for her to rage at. When she needs to be reminded of funny things she said as a teenager, I am there to shout at her “It’s My Way Or The Right Way!”. We laugh until we cry, and we cry until we laugh. Forever, and ever she is mine and I am hers and that is that.

Even if she is a vegan.