Creative Non-Fiction by Lyndsey Bryden

Here’s a couple facts about my time in grade five.

1. My teacher Mr. Feeley was an OG, sandal-wearing, hippie-generation rock climber who spent the year teaching the class about veganism between lessons on Pythagoras and chess.
2. We watched a documentary in class on how climate change was happening because too many people eat meat and nobody wants to talk about it!
3. I wanted to help.

And so with these three nuggets of information churning in my eleven-year-old brain, I decided I was gonna go vegan for the planet. That night my mom supportively bought me a package of tube-like TVP sausages, a meal I remember vividly because I was focused on the gorgeously shiny sausages the rest of my family was eating. To nobody’s surprise but my own, the change didn’t stick. Over the years I’ve enthusiastically embarked on a new dietary journey for the benefit of the planet at least a dozen times. Pescatarian, vegetarian, no red meat, fully vegan…each of these seemed like the perfect way to finally make a change. To make a difference. And there were occasional longer episodes of success, of course. But it never truly stuck.

I think the greatest success amongst a crop of unimpressive successes was when I stopped drinking milk. I feel the need to emphasize that I grew up drinking a truly astounding amount of milk. Like, ‘Mac and I would finish a 4L jug in a day’ amounts of milk. At some point I realized that even if I didn’t go fully vegan, switching to plant milk was an easy way I could make my diet more climate-friendly. So I asked my mom to start buying different types of plant milks, and tried them out until I settled on something I liked – Silk Soy Original, in the red carton. And the change stuck! For a long time. No more cow’s milk, except on the four-times-per-year special occasion of a glass after a slice of chocolate birthday cake. This went on for a while – at least three years.

But eventually, I started drinking milk again. I can’t pinpoint the exact reason. Learning about the dairy industry in one of my second year classes was definitely a factor. I had mentally prepared for the class to turn me off milk completely. But surprisingly, when our examination of the BC Dairy system was complete, I actually had a more positive perception. Whether that was because of what we’d learned or what I’d wanted to hear, I don’t know. The rest of the reasons are less concrete, less about what I was learning. It’s an easy way to get protein and calories, which as an athlete I desperately needed. It’s a nostalgic drink from my childhood. I like how it tastes – a hot take, I know. So I started drinking milk again. Yet another failed pass at a permanent dietary change – perhaps another failure for the climate.

Learning about the environment, where we’ve been and where we’re headed has been is a double edged sword. Because knowledge is power, don’t get me wrong. But it is so easy to become jaded. To feel like we’re going nowhere. To feel absolutely powerless. Because in university we’re taught that at the end of the day, taking action against climate change depends on legislative change to eliminate fossil fuels. And legislative change depends on creating a monumental tide of political will. Reading those words on the page, I know there is power there, for me and for all of us. But there’s also a grumbly Voice in my head muttering about how in the end, what’s on my plate matters a lot less than what’s on the legislative docket. I don’t really know why I’ve never been able to stay vegan. But I do know that the reason I’m at peace with my meat-eating is because of that Voice and the point it makes.

There were certain obstacles that popped up as I tried to lower my dietary carbon footprint. One was when I gave myself an iron deficiency after cutting red meat from my diet. My mom took me for a blood test after a particularly abysmal cross country season. I was sixtieth in the city next to my little brother’s second – ouch. I was diagnosed with iron deficiency to the tune of “This reading should be within 40-200, but you’re at a 3!”. Oops! Nobody ever told me vegans need to take iron pills. As an athlete, I was secretly happy, since I could blame that fall’s race results on my apparent inability to transport oxygen. As a longtime wannabe herbivore, I was demoralized, because this time it had felt like a change that was going to stick. Nevertheless, the entire fiasco shut the door on my red meat-less diet attempt. But in the back of my head, at least I had reassurance from the Voice. Nice try kid. Not to worry, this won’t change a thing. It’s not like it would’ve make a difference anyway.

It’s an interesting question. Do I feel guilty that I’m not plant-based? That I drink milk again, and occasionally go for a burger? Yes and no.

“ExxonMobil doesn’t give a shit how much tofu you eat.”

It’s the jaded Voice, and it’s trying to let me off the hook. But I’ve been trying to hook myself back on for a decade now. I don’t think I can say I’ve always given it my best shot. But I’m still shooting. Still trying to figure things out. And just like in grade five, I still want to help.

Learning about the systemic nature of the climate crisis has made me think beyond what I can change myself and more about how change can happen across the board. Sometimes I wonder if the Voice’s whole argument is just about making excuses, but I’m not sure it’s that simple. I think we all know the real answer is individual and collective change have to go hand in hand. Each is necessary. But unpacking my feelings about this has been like untangling rubbery wired earphones – it only seems to get more complicated. I don’t have a cleanly packaged answer. I wish I could say I did. I think I will in the future. A plant-based diet is something I aspire to, but I don’t beat myself up for not being there. I’d like to think I’ll get there eventually. Maybe for a couple years at a time. Maybe forever. Check back in twenty years.

Imagine moving to a new country at a quite grown age and learning something that the vast majority of your generation there fought for since they were children.

This is what has been happening to me. And here are my insights.

“That’s why I’m an antinatalist,” she said plainly.

I took a comically large bite of my hummus toast and leaned toward her across the table. Allison, a vegan anarchist from my dreadful calculus class, had not only explained to me why she was vegan – for the environment and because of animal cruelty – but she had also dropped the “having kids is wrong” card during the first hour of our first ever lunch together.

“But what about people like me who want kids?” I asked.

Sitting under the angrily yellow lighting of the university’s vegan cafe, this was the first time I had heard the word antinatalism. Even though I could logically figure out what antinatalism meant – something about being against childbirth? – the boldness of her statement forced me to pause. I remember feeling offended. I felt it in my chest. How could someone so adamantly reject childbearing when so many of us want it so badly? It would take me years to realize that my decision to have children was not actually a decision. It was a choice that I had been taught had one correct answer. I remember feeling activated, almost angry at her, for being so against people having children. You don’t have to have kids, but who are you to tell other people what to do with their bodies? Biology professor Guy McPherson’s prediction that we’d all be dead in 10 years hadn’t really hit me yet.

I think I wanted to be like her – at least, I wanted to have strong convictions like her. I had yet to find out which ones. The following years would lead me to learn that I was also an antinatalist and a wannabe vegan, but I wouldn’t connect my conversation with Allison to those beliefs in a pipeline until now. I felt some sort of shame associated with my non-veganness and my desire to raise kids that came from my body. I recall feeling like she was right to be vegan, to be an antinatalist, and yet I felt it in my body as an offense. The general narrative I’d been spoon-fed by society was that our value as women came from our maternal capacities. Allison was vehemently rejecting this.

University coursework in sociology taught me that decisions like this are commonly presented to us as prescriptions: you should be looking for your life partner, you should have children, you shouldn’t get an abortion, you shouldn’t sleep with other people. It wasn’t about having kids or not having kids. It was about the choice. I wanted kids, so why was I so angry about abortion bans? I had no idea how to be alone. Wouldn’t it be nice to have children to take care of me at the end of the world? Yes. But not only would I be suffering, but they would be suffering with me. Why subject anyone to this climate emergency? Then it hit me. That’s why Allison is an antinatalist.

When the United States started seriously limiting abortion access for people with uteruses in 2022, I was living in my van after a rock bottom depressive episode, an abusive relationship, and the deterioration of my sense of self into precious little shreds. I wrote for a living, and published whatever was on my mind on my personal blog in my free time. I started asking too many questions all at once, driving my mental health to a critical point where I posted a blog called “We Need to Talk About Abortion” and ended it with the threat of mounting the kneecaps of those who threaten my bodily autonomy to the dashboard of my camper van. Of course, I wasn’t actually planning on removing the kneecaps of pro-birth people, but I viscerally felt the government’s attempt to crack down on my bodily autonomy. I felt it in my throat, like I wanted to scream. I felt it in my gut, like it was being death gripped by the hand of an angry man. My rage that day was tangible, and it still lives near the top of my blog’s homepage – simmering, seething, waiting for someone to claim it and use it as fuel to light the White House on fire.

Before my partner was my partner, we laid in bed together, my arm draped over his chest, and I asked him – terrified – if he wanted kids. That question turned into a three hour philosophical debate in which he claimed having children was unethical and I spat back something about bodily autonomy. I was angry at him. (I fell in love with him anyway). He was right. I quickly realized that having kids without the consent of those children to be born was cruel, unethical. And to bring them into the world as it burns? Even worse. I joined him in his antinatalist beliefs, much to the surprise of my four-years-younger self who had resented Allison for believing the same thing.

How had I ended up here? I’ve always wanted kids! My questions didn’t have answers. I hated that fact. Looking at it now, though, it’s no small wonder that I rejected the imposition of life on another human being when just a year before, I was laying in bed, staring straight up at the ceiling, my eyes fully glazed over and my mouth half open and a box cutting knife laying next to me that just minutes ago, had been pressed against my wrist, unmoving. The room was spinning around me. Does anything actually matter? Fuck if I know.

My psychiatrist would tell you that I needed to be on stronger meds, that I was pondering the devastating reality of existence because I didn’t have enough serotonin. My mom would tell you that it was because I didn’t eat right and I needed to go outside more often. My friends would probably tell you that it was because I was quarantined during a global pandemic. Future me would tell you that it was because I was freshly out of an abusive relationship with my lover-turned-rapist and I was hurting and why would I ever want kids if I was nearly forced to?

I didn’t know how to be alone. I was addicted to drugs, existentially depressed, and still covered in invisible bruises from loving a narcissist.

Why is it so hard to be alone? Why is existence unbearable? How do I fix that?

I waffled over the answers to these questions for a year. I still do.

Do I actually want kids, or was I conditioned to believe that?
Is having kids my solution to my loneliness?
How dare I subject my kids to the suffering of this world?
If I, with all my privilege, am suffering so deeply, where will my kids be at my age?

At some point, I decided it was worth it to prevent any potential future suffering and protect them from burning along with the planet. My heart half-breaks knowing I will never carry a child, but I am an antinatalist because I believe in joy. For those of us who exist, we might as well love, and with vigor. And for those of us who don’t yet exist, for those who will never exist, enjoy the void. We made this choice because we love you.

And dearest reader, I will never tell you what to do with your body. You may have children and raise them with their toes in the dirt if you’d like. And I will look upon their childhood joy with nostalgia and jealousy and fear. But before you do, consider my words. Do you think there is more suffering or more joy in this world?