The Last Time I Ate a Burger, I Cried

 The Last Time I Ate a Burger, I Cried

Not because it was delicious. Because it was easy.

It was a Tuesday. I was sitting in my car in a parking lot, engine running, rain tapping on the windshield. The burger was from a drive-thru I'd visited probably 200 times before. I unwrapped it, took a bite, and suddenly couldn't swallow.

Not physically. Emotionally.

Something had cracked open three days earlier, and I couldn't seal it back shut.

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The Crack

It started with a video. You know the kind. The algorithm serves it up at 11pm when you're too tired to scroll past. I almost did. But the thumbnail stopped me.

A cow. Close up. Eyes like liquid brown glass, long lashes, a calm expression. The kind of face you'd see in a children's book.

Then the video played.

I won't describe what happened next. You've heard it before, or you've avoided hearing it. But here's what I didn't expect: the sound.

Not the machinery. The silence before it.

That silence lasted three seconds in the video. It's been living in my chest for two years.

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The Thing Nobody Tells You

Nobody tells you that changing how you eat isn't really about food.

It's about family.

Three days after that video, I went to my mother's house for Sunday lunch. She'd made potjie, slow-cooked for hours, the way her mother taught her. The smell hit me before I opened the gate. Beef, carrots, potatoes, nostalgia.

I sat down. She served me. I looked at the plate.

The meat wasn't anonymous anymore. It wasn't "dinner." It was somebody.

I pushed it around with my fork. My mother watched. She didn't say anything at first. Then quietly: "You're not eating."

"I'm just not hungry."

"You've lost weight. Are you sick?"

"I'm fine, Ma."

"You're not fine. You're judging me."

That landed like a slap. Because she was right. Not about the judging part—about the distance. My plate had become a wall between us. Every meal was a conversation I didn't know how to have.

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The Grocery Store Meltdown

Week two. Pick n Pay. I'm standing in the aisle with the tins, holding a can of baked beans like it's a life raft, and I just start crying.

Not loud. The kind of crying where your face stays still and the tears just leak out while you're staring at price tags.

Because I didn't know what to eat anymore. Everything I knew how to cook started with meat or ended with cheese. My body was angry. My brain was foggy. My stomach made sounds like it was rearranging furniture.

A woman walked past with her trolley, saw my face, and quickly looked away. That's South Africa for you. We see suffering, we mind our business.

I wanted to grab her trolley and say: I'm not crazy. I just found out I've been paying for murder my whole life and I don't know how to stop.

But I bought the beans and went home and ate them straight from the can, standing over the sink, crying into the tin.

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The Betrayal

My body started fighting back around week three.

Headaches. Fatigue. Cravings so intense I dreamed about biltong. I woke up once having chewed my pillow in my sleep.

My friends were supportive in that South African way—which is to say, not at all.

"Just eat the wors, bru."

"Plants have feelings too, hey."

"You're gonna need B12 shots and then you'll die anyway."

The jokes stung because they came from people who loved me. But underneath the jokes was something sharper: my choices were making them uncomfortable. Because if I could change, what did that say about them?

Nobody wants to look at their own plate.

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The Moment It Stopped Being Hard

Month two. I'm at a birthday party. Braai, obviously. Pap and sous, salads, lamb chops, chicken wings. The full ceremony.

I brought my own patty. Some lentil thing I'd found at Woolies. I stood at the edge of the fire, holding it, feeling like an idiot.

My uncle—same one from that Sunday months ago—walked past, saw what I was holding, and stopped.

I braced myself.

He looked at my patty. He looked at me. He looked at the flames.

Then he said: "Give it here."

I handed it over. He put it on the grid, next to the boerewors. Flipped it when it was ready. Handed it back on a plate.

"First one's always ugly," he said. "Next one you'll get right."

He walked away. Didn't say another word about it all night.

That patty was terrible. Dry, bland, fell apart after two bites. But I ate every crumb. Because for the first time, someone had made space for me at the fire instead of trying to pull me back from the edge.

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What I Actually Eat Now

People always ask: "But what DO you eat?"

Here's a Tuesday:

Breakfast: Oats with peanut butter and banana. The peanut butter drips down the side of the bowl and the banana gets all soft and sweet when you mash it in.

Lunch: Leftover chickpea curry from last night. I made too much on purpose. The house still smells like cumin and garlic.

Dinner: Chakalaka with pap. My aunt's recipe, minus the sausages. She taught me how to make it over WhatsApp, voice notes full of static and love.

Snack: An apple, sliced thin, with salt. Try it before you judge.

I'm not hungry. I'm not weak. I'm not missing out.

I'm just eating differently.

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The Question Nobody Asks

Here's what I've learned: going vegan isn't about perfection. It's not about being pure or righteous or better than anyone.

It's about asking one question and being brave enough to sit with the answer.

The question is: If I knew, would I choose differently?

I knew. I chose.

Not because I'm special. Because once you really see, you can't unsee. And once you can't unsee, doing nothing starts to feel worse than doing something hard.

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The Last Bite

That burger in the car, two years ago. The one I couldn't swallow.

I sat there in the rain for a long time after I threw the rest away. Windows fogged up. Radio off. Just me and the silence.

I wasn't sad about the burger. I was sad about who I'd been before I knew. All those years of not asking. All those meals where I never wondered who I was eating.

The cow in that video. The ones before her. The ones after.

I can't bring them back. I can't undo anything.

But I can do this one small thing, meal after meal, until it's not small anymore. Until it's just how I live.

The first time is ugly. The next one you'll get right.

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If you're reading this and something in your chest feels tight—like maybe you've known for a while and just haven't looked—I'm not here to judge you.

I'm just here to say: I looked. And I'm still here. And the food is better than you think.

The silence afterward?

That's the part nobody warns you about.

But it's also the part that makes it worth it.