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My friends are always going on about how they don't understand how I can be a vegetarian, "Like, what do you eat?" or "I could never do it!". I always reply, "If you truely feel for something, you can always figure it out!"

This is a thread to post your personal hurdles that you had to jump before coming a vegetarian. Like myself, I have family and friends that have this strange obsession with meat. Months after I became a vegetarian, I had friends waving salami sandwiches under my nose in the cafeteria going "Doesn't that smell good? Mmmmmmmmm...." sure, my mouth still waters when I see a McDonalds commercial, but I just keep reminding myself what it is! Woot!

Generally, people don't mind. I don't preach at them, they don't preach at me, all is good. And the thought of eating meat is so psychologically disgusting that I have no trouble not doing it.

Mother is basically the only 'obstacle'. She sort of gave up now but she used to b***h more and whatnot, about how I'd get anemia or tuberculosis (0.o) or some such nonsesne. She's the main reason I'm not vegan, really. Well, that and the fact that maybe half my diet consists of dairy in some form, and without all me fat free yogurt and cottage cheese I'd be a bit screwed.

Monday she went into a meat store after getting her hair done and initially I entered the store to and it was so naseauting (meat...jhanging everywhere, all kinds of meat and the SMELL was so...ugh) so I ended up waiting outside for her and it was freezing cold and she took ages and it sucked.

Here's my sadly hilariously sad vegetarianism story. I was at this week-long trip to Yosemite with my school a little while ago. The first night, they served Jello and Jello pudding for dessert. I was asking my friends what I should do, because I don't eat gelatin. They told me it might be kosher, which would mean it wasn't animal gelatin. So here's the script of me and the cafeteria lady.
Me: Excuse me, is this Jello kosher?
Her: question
Me: I mean, does it have animal products in it?
Her: I dunno, lemme check the box. She goes in the back. About 5 minutes later: There's no animal products in it, just gelatin.
Me: stare rolleyes
So I went back to our table and told my friends. Suddenly they all jumped on my back. Some were giving me unhelpful suggestions and the like. My best friend... Let me say, folks, this is my BEST FRIEND. IN THE WORLD. She totally attacked me for being veg. Said it's stupid. Said it's pointless. Said it doesn't help animals. It wasn't the first time, either. Some tried to stand up for me. I started screaming at people and ran to the bathroom crying. I came back out and ended up screaming more. In my cabin, my BFF tried to apologize. The lack of sugar and lack of respect were giving me MAJOR moodswings. We went ice skating that night. I was having really bad moodswings all over the ice. I could tell I was freaking my cabinmates out. Every time I looked, one of them would be talking to a teacher. I knew I was next. The French teacher, who I LOVE because I take Spanish, talked to me first. We talked for a while, and it was nice. Around half an hour later, my humanities teacher came up to me. She'd somehow heard about my veggie side of the story, and knew how I felt. Turns out she's been veg for two months!!!! Everyone congratulate her!!!! So we had a long talk about vegism, and I told her some deep-down, confidential feelings I have about my BFF that no one else but me knows (but that's off-topic). And later, I apologized to everyone and my BFF apologized to me, and then it was all good. 4laugh Don't you love it when things end that way?

Meh, every now and then someone tries making a joke about it, but usually he or she isn't all that brilliant so they just make a fool out of themselves.
My doctor actually tends to give me a hard time because of that but my blood tests always shut her up. smile