I’m Sarah, I’m 18 years old and I went vegan on the 1st August of 2016. Actually I could have transitioned to veganism before. During my last year of middle school (2014), my history teacher made us watch a documentary about the life of chicken in the meat industry. At the beginning we saw an egg and at the end we saw a nugget. Everything was shown: their life, torture, death and all the steps in the making of the meat.
This documentary truly disgusted me. But I didn’t stop eating meat. Why? I don’t know. I was disgusted but not sad. I was feeling bad but not bad enough. Maybe it was because I was in the middle of my classmates, they were making a lot of noises, only half of the class was watching, the rest was just making stupid jokes, some were related to the documentary, a lot weren’t, so I was watching but distracted by all the other things that was happening around me. I was feelings things but my emotions weren’t strong enough at that moment. Anyways I just chose to forget it.
Then I went to high school and improved my English in a really short time so in October 2015 I was able to watch a video, “the most important speech you will ever hear”, a 1h conference in an American high school by Gary Yourofsky. I was horrified. I was alone in my room and I was horrified. During one hour he destroyed everything I believe in, showing me how the industries were horrible, how we didn’t need all of that and how it was just bad for us and our planet. In only one hour I went vegetarian. Not vegan, only vegetarian. I was at my father’s for a couple of days, as soon as I got home I went vegetarian, I avoided dairy, I never ate honey in my entire life. The only thing stopping me from going vegan was eggs. It was the only thing I didn’t know what to do about. I told myself I was doing enough, a few eggs wouldn’t hurt. On August 2016, a doctor appointment to check my (terrible) cholesterol and an hour spent to watch Gary Yourofsky’s speech again made me go vegan. Bye eggs. I didn’t own anything made with animal skin, with the exception of two pairs of leather shoes.
I live with my mother and she never said anything. The only thing she asked me was a list of the things I didn’t want to eat. But my father gave me all the fake arguments, insulted me and told me that I would have a lot of deficiencies, get sick and die. That’s some good parenting here.
I don’t have a lot of vegan friends, actually I know some vegans from social medias but I only have a vegetarian friend. But I don’t relly care about having vegan friends, all I want to do is do my best to live my life without harming any animal.