Maybe it’s different for you, but people don’t always choose to care about things. Rather, it is something that happens to us, so I don’t choose to care about the screaming and bleeding of pigs as I run them over with a lawnmower. It’s forced on me by my empathy, it was never a choice. I suppose I could choose to care about the grass, but it doesn’t happen on its own.

That’s why slaughterhouse work is associated with higher rates of self harm, violence, addiction, alcoholism, overdose, abuse, depression, and suicide. Slaughterers don’t choose to care about the animals they kill, it just happens to them. Sometimes they become so psychically wounded that they stop caring, but after that they lose the ability to care about anyone else either.

Neither do I choose to care if you live or die. It just happens. Unfortunately.

I do choose to block you, though, because you’re going to hurt me again if I don’t. I wonder why you chose to hurt me?