The Vegetarian's Guide to Eating Meat. Marissa Landrigan

think I was, or I didn’t want to be. I hadn’t stepped aside because of the color of his skin. But I knew I lived in a different world now, one burdened by the reality that I needed more than good intentions. Becoming a vegetarian had been a gesture of activism, but putting it into practice was more difficult than I’d expected. Moving to a city was what I thought I wanted, but I felt lonely and out of my depth. When I think about it now, I see my liberal privilege exposed, no longer sheltered by the safe confines of a college classroom, or the sterilized enclave of a suburb.

      I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but there was something complicated about the city: something uncomfortable in the space between the progressive I wanted to be and the discomfort I felt walking through Columbia Heights at night. I was living in the midst of systemic poverty and institutional racism, and deep down I knew that no amount of boycotting, no well-organized rally, could fix that. I also felt a little hypocritical. I worked in an upscale air-conditioned office, cold-calling reporters and putting together press events to raise money and awareness for wild spaces that were as far removed from this city as possible. How many children from that Southeast elementary school would ever visit Zion National Park? Did the work I was doing matter, in the context of the crime rates and rampant addiction right outside my door?

      When my roommates asked me what was wrong that night, I was too embarrassed to tell them that a man on a bicycle had yelled at me, so instead I just said, “The city makes me sad.” Knowing that they, in their liberal hearts, would understand, I told them, “There’s so much broken here.”

      I began to daydream about the West, a place where I could escape these messy complications. A place, I thought, where I could live fully: where there would be easy access to the local food and fresh produce I knew I needed to be a better vegetarian, where it would cost less to live and I would have more time to write, where there was more space to wander and fewer people, where maybe I could dig down deep and truly join the community. I set my sights again on Montana, where Kevin was still in college, where I could start over.