As a child, my mother would take me to visit my grandmother, who lived in a different city, a couple of hours away from us.
I didn’t like to go there so much, because I didn’t have any video games there, and no friends to play with.
I was so bored, that sometimes I took pleasure in hurting and killing innocent creatures.
I used to burn spiders and their spiderwebs, kill and torture other little insects.
Sometimes I killed some little cats also, not with my bare hands, but I let them die when I could have saved them, because I released the kraken, I mean the dog on them, when I knew she would kill them.
Between my 10 and 12’s that was the part of my life where I was crueler than any other.
At school I would make fun of other students who were somehow different and make their lives a living hell, I would be mean to my family and to everyone, for no good reason.
And later on between the ages of 16 and 20, those were the times when I was more aware of everything wrong I had done before, and realized that I had to make up for it somehow, so that’s when I became vegetarian, started protecting the insects, started helping the kids getting bullied and between the ages of 25 till now, are the ones when I can understand myself and why did I do the things I do at different time periods in my life.
I’m also in the process of redeeming myself from a few other things, once in Germany there was this guy from chile, who really needed my help, but I didn’t help him for some reason, so even to this day I still feel guilty for that, and try to make up for it by being extra nice and helpful to any new person I meet from Latin-America.
Little do they know, I’m not just being nice, it’s my way to feel better about myself about something bad I did in the past.
People ask me always, why did you become vegetarian, and I usually say that I don’t like that they kill the animals or how they treat them, or about the environment, our health, or just common sense.
I never told them the truth, because I was ashamed of it, and still am.
Never told anyone that actually it was because I was trying to make up for something bad I had done.
And always, when someone sees that I can’t kill the spider, cockroach or any insect that got into our house, I have to pick it up carefully and take it outside, they ask me why.
And I reply that I will spare the little guy today, that I don’t want to make the floor dirty or something like that.
But the truth, that I’m embarrassed to admit, is that the real reason why I can’t kill or hurt any insect or animal now, is because I’ve killed way too many before.