My first attempt to go Vegetarian

The first long trip I did in my life was right after I finished high school and I went to LA with my best friend back then to visit his cousin Elena. Who grew up in CA most of her life. Those were the days when I tried different things for the first time and some of those taught me important things from life like a sense of independence, freedom to be who I am and allow myself to meet all sorts of people. Of course everything was new and exciting as I felt as if I’d found something that felt really good as I was ready to start discovering myself.

I grew up in México City, far away from farms, animals and nature and that kept me in a bubble that I had no idea I was in. Elena was a great catalyzer. She was the trigger that made me consider the alternative of going vegetarian for the first time. I really admired her determination to love other species as equals, and that had a great impact on me. Socializing with people who didn’t buy leather clothes, who took care of only buying products from companies that didn’t practice experiments in animals or that didn’t have an impact on the ozone layer and who really believed in the work of activists and pro nature associations. All that made me question myself about my own morals and responsibilities as a human being. I was amazed in how by experiencing a bit of the world for the first time made me suspect that I’ve had spent a very long time living in a lie.

When I came back from that trip in the US two months later I wasn`t the same anymore. My family, my friends and the people I knew could notice the change and specially when they knew about my attempt to go vegetarian. Nobody really understood why I wanted to stop eating meat. In México, it can certainly be a crime not to love our traditional cuisine, which is mainly based on meat. So, going to a restaurant with friends or family was definitely not the best scenario to share some quality time with them, because from the moment I opened the menu a long discussion was ready to take place with all the right questions that made me think about this twice. Yeah, I guess I wasn’t feeling very strong about my new morals once I was back into my own reality and away from LA.

At 18 the world can appear very small for someone like me. So small, that it turned very difficult to live in a home with no special food for me, with no one to help me sort a balanced diet and practically no one who could think like me and help out. It seemed like leaving the US was like coming out from a dream where apparently everything was possible and accessible. To stop buying leather was ok but not eating “properly” became a serious issue with my mother who constantly brought complains during meals at home and basically turned my short vegetarian life into a miserable experience.

So after a few months of justifying myself with EVERYBODY about my decision… I finally gave up. I realized my life was too dependent from my social group and I really wasn’t looking to attract more attention to myself from what I already had. As a guy who spent most of his early life being called a faggot you can imagine that by the time I finally ended with that nightmare called High School I didn’t want to go thru more trouble in College where everything was new and all I wanted was to belong to the rest of the crowd.