This is a post I’ve been wanting to write for a long time because it’s a question people often ask me, but there’s always been something else on my mind that I want to write. With this week being National Vegetarian Week, it’s the perfect time for me to get around to writing this!
I’m not going to write about why you shouldn’t eat meat or try to make you become a vegetarian and I’m not going to turn to gory details, this is simply a chance for me to share my personal reasons and promote this week. I know that what we eat is our own choice and noone else’s, just like the things we say and do, and that’s why I don’t agree with the people who try to force their values and beliefs onto other people.
I’ve been a vegetarian for almost 5 years, and as I meet new people and they become aware of this, they question it. I don’t think anybody really questions vegetarianism out of nosiness, I think it just makes people curious. It was an easy transition for me to lose meat from my life because it was something I didn’t eat much of anyway, but lack of it was not the reason I chose to cut it out completely. I made the choice during a time of my life where I felt weighed down by life I guess you could say, and it was one of the first things that made me realise I was my own person and I had the right to have control and make decisions for myself. That teenage era is tricky because there’s such a fine line between being a kid and being an adult, but I gave myself responsibility by choosing not to eat meat because I gave myself the choice.
The control factor of the decision helped me out a great deal because it taught me some things about growing up, but I wouldn’t have made the choice if it wasn’t something I didn’t want. I’d gotten to the point that eating meat disgusted me, and it wasn’t ‘just food‘ anymore. As we grow up, we become more aware of not only our surroundings, but also everything in life, and I became so much more aware of what I was eating. I guess I always knew what it was, but I never really looked into where it came from.
It’s kinda like trusting our the people in our lives, as we trust where our food comes from, but we never really see what goes on behind closed doors. I know plants are living things too, but they’re not quite on the same level as animals and there’s no such thing as ‘plant cruelty’. So when I choose to trust where my vegetables come from, they could be full of chemicals for all I know but it’s only me that would suffer. When I used to trust where my meat came from, it was always another living creature that would suffer and I hate that. Animals don’t have the opportunity to make the choice of whether they’re eaten or not, so I took my opportunity and chose not to eat them.
When people learn that I’m a vegetarian, they ask if I eat fish, and it’s something that really bugs me. I know there are a number of vegetarian sub-categories and I know in some countries the ‘names’ vary, but I hate when people say they’re one thing, and they’re another.
I am a vegetarian. I don’t eat pork, beef, chicken, lamb, venison, fish, or any other animal. I don’t eat geletine or any other form of animal guts. I am nothing other than what I claim to be. I am veggie and proud.
I know so many people that have had a phase and chosen not to eat meat for a while then gone back to it, but I can honestly never see myself switching back. Even the thought of eating meat again makes me wanna vom.
Happy National Vegetarian Week!!
Courtney’s Imagination★
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