Best Massage Therapist *EVER*

I absolutely love being back in school. I will happily admit that I am a nerd, and I love to learn. That's essentially what it comes down to.

But being back in school also reminds me of what it was like to be in high school. And college. And grad school. It's effectively flashed me back to feeling like a social reject again.

Don't get me wrong... I have friends at school. I like the people I frequently talk to there, the people I hang out with, the people I've had almost every class with. There's a lot of good folks there. But then, there's The Others. The ones who reinforce how very very odd I am, sometimes by doing nothing more than existing. Which both delights and bothers me.

I'm used to being a misfit. Believe me. I mean, I've had years and years and years to get used to it. I know that I have 101 viewpoints that completely go against the norms of the average American, and I'm reminded of that on a fairly regular basis by folks. And thankfully, the folks who I'm sure consider me a weirdo are the folks I have absolutely nothing in common with, who I'd never seek out as friends, who I have no interest in getting to know really. So it's not that it bothers me because I want them to like me. I think, essentially, it just bothers me because I just hate being reminded with clarity and frequency what a social reject I am. I can deal with being reminded of this at work because, well, I'd *prefer* not to fit in there. But now that I am doing school as well, my social awkwardness is unavoidable and super-magnified. I feel like I have a big giant weirdo-alarm wailing when I walk by people. Or like I'm walking around in a cute little baby-doll t-shirt that says I FUCKED YOUR TWO-YEAR OLD.

And some days the whole vegan thing sure as shit doesn't help.

Like yesterday, for example. In physiology, we spent part of the class discussing organic compounds, one of which is proteins. Our instructor of course gave an example of meat-eating as how we get our proteins--someone in class blurted, "Also broccoli too!" Our instructor nodded and said, "Yes, you're right. And tofu as well, if any of you are vegetarian or vegan..." And, I kid you not, a girl in my class responded to this comment by shouting, "She is!" super-loud and pointing at me. In the middle of class. No shit. Shouted and pointed. Given the oddness of her blurting this out unprovoked, I wouldn't've been surprised if someone else had shouted right after, "Get her!" and then everyone had started running towards me with torches and started setting my castle on fire to smoke me out.

Fine though. Whatever. Vegan = freak. I know. I'm over it.

Of course my instructor asked the typical questions: How do you get your protein? Don't you miss cheese? etc. etc. To which I gave my usual responses.

Cue the obligatory Speed-esque representation of stereotypical meat-eating responses:

"I don't eat that much meat myself anymore really."

"Ew, C______! Don't talk about that! I like meat and would like to continue liking meat!"

"You totally shouldn't eat foie gras because they torture ducks for that stuff! But mmm, I sure like me some veal."

Fart fart toot toot.

But later, a girl in class randomly bursts out, laughing, "I have the funniest story! The other day my boyfriend and I were driving and he hit a cow! And the cow was, like, pregnant and stuff! There were like 60 cows or something that had gotten loose, and we hit the one. And then these guys came, and they like hoisted the cow up with one of those CAT construction crane things, and then they slit it's throat right in front of us! Like RIGHT IN FRONT OF US! *laughing some more* And then they asked if we wanted to come back with them and help them butcher it--ha ha ha!" She said all this while half-smirking in my direction.

Thankfully, I don't think I was the only one that was horrified that she actually found such a thing to be so extremely *funny* of all things. A handful of other people in the class also looked like someone had inserted an anal-probe up their ass and shocked them with it, which restored my faith in humanity at least a tiny smidgen (though not much).

But how fucking *disturbing* is it to hear someone actually *laughing* about a pregnant animal being treated so brutally... and RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER FOR HER TO WATCH? I'm not talking the-world-should-be-vegan-fluffy-bunnies-and-flowers-and-ponies-and-rainbows-and-i-heart-the-world disturbing. I'm moreso just talking WHO-THE-HELL-FINDS-THAT-FUNNY?-NOT-EVEN-MOST-CARNIVORES-THANKFULLY! disturbing.

I mean, seriously--Jeffrey Dahmer, if you were still alive, I think we might've found your animal-torturing soul-mate.

It seriously seriously chills me to my very core lately to hear people speak like this.

And the even more fucked up thing is that I HEAR THAT KINDA SHIT ALL THE TIME. It's why more often than not, I steer as far away from the topic of my veganism when it comes to conversation. Because somehow, for some reason, these are the kinds of things that people like to respond with.

And you know what--more often than not it's not the actual meat-eating that disturbs me quite so much, it's the horrifying ways in which people so flippantly and jokingly and coldly speak of the death and suffering involved with it, as though it's the fucking funniest joke ever. It is cold-hearted and brutal, and seriously, as of late, it is starting to completely f- up my view of the world and make me think of people as horribly horribly ugly beings.

I can't even tell you what a hard time I've been having with this lately--and for some reason, the topic of animal-suffering seems to come up a hundred times more frequently in random conversation than it ever has before. The sad thing is, I really really love people. My heart is warm and goopy when it comes to the love I often feel towards people as a whole--we are fucked up, but I've always found reassurance in the fact that I know, deep-down, most of us are really good people at heart. But lately, I've become royally disenchanted with this view. Lately I've been having a hard-time thinking that people are anything better than ugly fucking shits.

I can understand the meat-eating. I can. Clearly I think that's f-ed up and wrong in its own respect, but I can at least COMPREHEND it. Mostly because it's usually accompanied by a shirking away from the horrible brutality that lurks behind meat, a kind of desperate amnesia--people don't want to know or see where their meat comes from because they *know* it *is* horrific. This willful ignorance (while disturbing and messed up in its own respect) is at least a sort of back-hand acknowledgment that there *is* in fact something fucked up going on in the brutalizing of animals for food. But I cannot understand why someone could find humor, find smirking-goodness, in watching an animal's throat get slit. Or joking about an animal's throat getting slit. Or joking about eating meat and the animals being tortured for it. I *don't* want to understand it. I really and truly don't. I want to have absolutely NOTHING to do with these kinds of people.

It just makes me really really sad.

This is why more often than not as of late, I really just want people to leave me alone, so I can go be a hermit somewhere, pretend that people are beautiful like I used to think, grow my own vegetables, and not speak to anyone EVER AGAIN.

Which is gonna make me the *BEST MASSAGE THERAPIST EVER!* Heh heh. *Sniffle*