to be reborn, not born again

I've been vegetarian for nearly three months now. It all started with Fast Food Nation- one of the greatest books I've ever read. It totally opened my eyes to the world I was living in, especially as I worked at McDonald's at the time. I knew a bit about meat and the whole process but the part about the slaughter house brought me to tears. I guess it was the way that it was written that really touched me. I tried to stop eating meat but it didn't really go anywhere. After seeing the movie and having a visual image of it all, I knew I had to stop. I didn't know how I was going to do it. I had never been in love with steak or burgers but chicken- now I was always down for some chicken nuggets or a nice chicken breast. But it stopped. I went 'cold turkey' so to speak. And I haven't looked back. This video really got to me as well.

My friend Karina has been a vegetarian for three years now. She watched a video about dog and chicken cruelty and was completely turned off. We went out for breakfast with some friends the following day and she ordered pancakes. I admired her but I never really understood or questioned her reasoning. I simply accepted it.

Now I wish people treated me the same way. When I have to say, "actually... I'm a vegetarian" people respond with "oh..." It's amazing how everyone has an opinion about it and feels the need to argue with me. Now, I'm not one for confrontation. I try to avoid it as best as I can. When people debate with me, I lose all my facts. All I can do is look away and say "hey this is how I feel about it". I love it when people tell me I won't last. It just gives me more motivation to go on with it.

A few weeks ago, I went camping with some friends. They were all thinking: "um.. what are you going to eat?" None of them are very open-minded about it. When we went to get groceries, I went over to the vegetarian section and they were very skeptical about the food they saw. I bought some fake chicken breasts with this really nice sauce and spices. While they were cooking up hot dogs, I was frying up the chicken and it smelled delicious. They all ended up wanting to try some.

If you keep Losing Sleep - Silverchair