Becoming an Atheist and other big decisions

I’ve made some big decisions this year. This year, of all the years, has started like this: my first decision would be not to make any New Year Resolutions. I would not fall for this trap over and over again. Even hamsters, the symbols of repetitive routines, are less prone to make the same mistakes, in the manner that human beings are used to. When something goes wrong, their instinct tells them not to go there again. “Don’t delude yourself, if you try the same strategy, it won’t work.” And it’s always the same resolutions: lose weight, get a gym membership, stop smoking, and so on. So, for me, I just decided not to give a single thought to it. I would simply not make plans.

Ironically, though, since the year began, three weeks ago, my life has taken directions that I would not specifically choose to initiate, you know, in the beginning of a new year. Or for that matter, decisions that I would not haven taken prior to serious and careful consideration over a number of months, or maybe years. For instance, take the first one: giving up red meat.

I’ve always loved red meat in its numerous forms. Be it barbecue, hamburguer, sausage, salami, or beef – if it’s bleeding I’m eating. Or was. Until one night I got really drunk on JD and Coke and after getting home, my boyfriend cooked half a kilo of steak. Sounds surreal, but we were very hungry, the kind of hunger that comes when you’ve drunk like a pig for 5 hours, and all you want to slide down your throat is the greasiest and heaviest food available. So he took this big chunky piece of ‘contra-filé’ out of the friezer, and sliced it, and fried so we could eat it with ‘bacon farofa’. Half a kilo. That’s 500 grams of cholesterol, fat, and blood down your throat. I don’t know if it was the alcohol or the meat or the two of them combined in my stomach, but I felt REALLY sick right after I chewed the last piece of animal flesh. It was a classic scene: me running to the bathroom and regurgitating everything back down the toilet.

Well, it turns out that after that I can’t even think about looking at a steak. I was actually hoping that the alcohol would blurry my memory and I would forget the episode the day after, but in the end all I got was a robust hangover and an irreversible repulsion to bloody red meat.

I didn’t think my aversion would extend itself towards other kinds of red meat such as ham and chourizo – and in fact, it hasn’t so much as become an uneasiness when faced with them. I get sick so easily this days since that episode that I just decided not to risk throwing up on the station’s platform or onto a customer in the bar. I even took a pregnancy test to check if that was the reason behind my sickness, but no, I’m not expecting. I guess I’ll have to live with it for a while until I find out why – meanwhile, no more red meat pour moi.

(to be continued…)