There are two things it's difficult to shut me up about: music and vegetarianism. Perhaps I'll write about the first topic another time, but for right now I'm going to go on a rant about why I choose not to eat animals.

When I was 16, I decided I was going to try going vegetarian for the first time. I don't remember my reasons for doing so, or if I even had any. I've always loved animals, but that wasn't really a contributing factor to this decision at the time. I cut out one meat a month, and even then I slipped up a lot. After a while I begrudgingly went back to eating meat, more disappointed in myself for failing than I was in consuming the flesh of another being that used to be alive.

A little less than a year later, after I'd turned 17, I learned about factory farming. I'd already been considering going back to a meat-free diet, but this was really the deciding factor. I stumbled upon videos of the horrible things that happen to cows, pigs, and chickens before they're even sent off to be butchered. I knew I couldn't go back to eating animals and pretend I hadn't just seen footage of animals being treated as though they weren't alive, as though they weren't aware of the things that were happening to them. I stopped eating pork, chicken, and beef shortly after that, and after I went off to college I stopped eating fish, as well. I felt much better both physically and emotionally after that, knowing that I wasn't taking the life of another living thing and putting the importance of their life beneath my own.

When I first stopped eating meat, I told myself I wouldn't get particularly crazy about it. I decided to keep my opinions to myself and let other people make their dietary choices without my input unless they specifically asked for it. However, I soon learned that not everybody else was prepared to be as respectful of my choice as I was of theirs. I was a camp counselor for a summer, and one of the campers asked several times why I didn't eat animals, because I did know that leaving meat off my plate wasn't actually going to make a difference, didn't I? Someone I knew from high school told me he was going to trap and kill a squirrel and force me to eat it. Everyone asked me what I ate, and how I got my protein. After that, I was a lot less reserved about voicing my beliefs about the meat industry in general. I still abstain from putting myself on a pedestal and saying I'm better than others for not eating meat, but you can expect a joke about meat being "murder" from me every now and again.

I'm aware that I come across as a preachy bleeding heart, but I don't really care. I feel good about my choices, and I think that's all that matters. I know I can't save every animal, but the knowledge that I can save just a few is worth it to me. I'm no longer even interested in eating meat--I'll pick the salad over the hamburger every time.