Being Vegetarian

Today, August 1st, marks one year since my decision to become a vegetarian.

Awesome, eh?

I had a lot of assumptions about becoming vegetarian. Well, actually one major one, I guess. I never thought about the time I might need to "grieve" the "loss" of meat. I figured I would just dive into this head-on and everything would be fine and dandy. Unfortunately, this was not the case. I felt extremely ashamed of how much I wanted to eat meat (mostly chicken) and I allowed myself to have a couple bite size pieces after the first month. I knew that I could always go back to my meat-eating diet, but I am someone who doesn't like to go backwards and this idea was not a real option for me. So I pressed on.

And I realized something: Gentleness, with myself. Of course I wanted meat, I'd been a meat-eater my whole life! It isn't easy to turn 26 years of meat-eating (give or take) into a meat-less diet, in spite of how determined I was to make this work. I allowed those feelings to be present, to remind myself that I might not be able to turn my palette around in just one month after years of being a carnivore. I knew I had to take it easy on myself, so I did.

I still love New England Clam Chowder and every once in a while, I eat it. I love won-ton soup, and I eat that too, carefully eating only the noodle and not the contents of the won-ton (go ahead and laugh. I do too.). Sometimes, I might eat a shrimp, or two. For the most part, though, I've lost the taste for meat. It still smells good to me when it's cooking, but I don't want to eat it. If I did, that would be OK, too, because being vegetarian, for me, is a process. It isn't over and it wasn't quite instantaneous. It will continue to evolve over the years the same way that I do.

I love being vegetarian, really and truly. Even though I have some trouble coming up with things to make for dinner (still), I have no intention of changing this lifestyle and I only look forward to feeling awesome for the remainder of my life.