Boycotting McDonald’s

I’m not sure if this is OCD related but it causes extreme anxiety. Are there any vegetarians/vegans here? I was once a vegetarian and had to go back eating meat because I would bruise very easily. Then I became flexitarian and pescatarian. Now I’m craving meat but the problem is I’m feeling guilty because I’m an animal lover and an advocate and I care about animal welfare. And unfortunately majority aren’t humanely treated. I don’t know if it’s OCD related but it really causes anxiety for me. That if I eat meat I’m a horrible person and that I’m a hypocrite.

I’ve been feeling depressed lately, because I’ve gone down a rabbit hole thinking about how it seems like everything is connected or underpinned by something unjust or inhumane. For example, the clothes we wear may have been made by people in unsafe working conditions, the animals we eat may have suffered in cages, the child actors from the shows we watch aren’t always protected and taken care of, and the materials from our phones were produced by oppressed children in the Congo. It just seems like there is something wrong with everything and it’s hard for me to see the good. I feel complicit in these unjust systems. I see people saying “boycott this” and “boycott that”, because money talks. But honestly I don’t want to boycott certain things. Nor do I want to become vegan. Then I feel guilty, like this makes me a bad person. It feels so hard to be a good person in this world. It feels impossible to be a good follower of Christ. Like what’s the point? How do you find joy when there is so much wrong with everything? Almost everything I love has lost its joy and the things I used to like doing, reading and writing and film, now feel wrong. I’ve become obsessed with being moral and it’s making me miserable.

I’ve been vegetarian since I was 6 years old when I realized that meat was dead animals. I didn’t put the pieces together until I was on a field trip to a farm when I was in kindergarten and I decided then I was never eating meat again. At 16, I went vegan and still am now at 24. That’s all fine and dandy because I like being vegan and it’s something I don’t want to change. However! Every time I accidentally eat something non-vegan or realize that a product I’ve been using isn’t vegan, I feel AWFUL. Like I cannot sleep right now at 3:30am bc I’m just thinking about the fact that I eat root vegetables and that means I kill plants (everyone loves to remind me that vegans “kill plants” which also does not help) and I accidentally drank this stupid energy drink the other day that turned out to have bovine collagen in it and that I’ve been using regular paper towels for my whole life and apparently those have gelatin in them which isn’t even vegetarian. I know that my unusually strong moral obligations come from my ocd, and I’m constantly ruminating on this and compulsively trying to think of ways to “counteract” my immoral behavior or punish myself. How do I grapple with moments where I accidentally or unknowingly have something non-vegan when it makes me feel like such an evil person? Does anyone else have this issue?