I'm Not Perfect

There's a kid's song by Laurie Berkner that goes

"I'm not perfect, no, I'm not.
I'm not perfect, but, I've got what I've got.
I do my very best, I do my very best, I do my very best each day
But, I'm not perfect and I hope you like me that way."

This has become my mantra as of late. I'm not perfect. I'm not a perfect person, mother, daughter, friend, wife, or vegan. It's hard to live up to perfection. I try. I try so damn hard that sometimes it just too tiring to keep trying to reach a level of perfect that is, quite frankly, unattainable.

When I mess up as a friend or partner I can usually talk to the person and fix things. I can apologize to them or hear their side and tell them mine. When I mess up as a vegan it's a bit harder to fix. I can't run out to the slaughterhouses and say to the cows I'm sorry for accepting a leather purse as a gift or wearing my leather clogs that I bought for work. So I offer up a silent prayer and hope my guilt doesn't consume me.

I've found that with parenting I sometimes I became too rigid in my beliefs and I had to let go of some things. This was for the good of me and my family. Having a high level of principals is something that is very important to me. But there was a cost in trying to follow someone else's notions of what was the perfect way to parent. I lost my own way. I found that when I tried to follow the rules exactly that I often missed out on listening to myself and listening to my child and what he needed. I began to feel confined and angry and often couldn't get past the box I had put myself into to. Sometimes, I feel that way with being vegan.

The label vegan sometimes feels like a box that I'm trapped in. Here's what goes through my head...

How can I say that I am vegan when I am wearing leather clogs? even though I agonized over buying them and didn't know what else to do since being a massage therapist requires good shoes and Danskin are great shoes and they were there in the store and I needed them quickly. I haven't found good non-vegan shoes yet. denial & laziness.
How can I say that I am vegan when I carry a leather purse? Out with my mom on a girls shopping spree. she offered to buy me a purse, I agonized over the leather part, tried to find one that wasn't. in the end said yes. wanted that feeling of connectedness. denial.
How can I say that I am vegan when I ate something that had an egg in it? out on a walk with a woman and her son. she offers keller a dunkin donut donut. I stayed silent because i wanted my son to feel part of the group and didn't want to say no it's not vegan, not this time. acceptance

I can hear some vegans (and non vegans) saying but think of the animals and how they had to suffer for that purse or that donut. Trust me I do. 99.8% of my decisions in life are not rash. I'm constantly thinking about the animals or the consequences of my actions. And this is my point. I don't want to carry this burden of guilt around with me because sometimes I make choices that don't fit with my values. I don't want other people to put me back into that box because they see me making a choice that's different from what I normally do.

The truth is I don't want to be stuck in this box that I have created. I want to be able to go with the flow and I think that I could be that way if other's didn't have the same set of rules that my mind does when it comes to labels and following things 100%. Does this make sense? I want to be able to eat the pasta enriched with fish oil if that's all there is to eat at my in laws. I want my son to be able to eat a cupcake at a birthday party once in awhile if thats the only thing to eat. I WANT to be flexible but I want other people to be flexible too.

I want them to know that if I eat the pasta or my son eats the cupcake every once in a awhile or that I wear my clogs that we still don't want animals to get hurt and that we still eat vegan at home and that we will still not eat eggs or cheese or milk regularly or meat (ever). I want them to know that I still hold the value of being vegan very high on my list but that I also don't want to be stuck in a box that feels like it's getting smaller everyday.

In the end I figure that all I want is for other people to know that I'm not perfect and that I realize that I am not perfect. Maybe it's not like the song says

"I'm not perfect and I hope you like me that way"

perhaps it should say

"I'm not perfect and I hope I like me that way."