Ten years ago I became a Vegetarian. 

To many that statement is straightforward enough to not invoke a raised brow or ponder for longer than it takes to read it. But for me, my family and interestingly enough my friends it was, { and sometimes still is }, a HUGE deal.

The thing is, I'd always been a proud carnivore. I didn't just love meat, for me it was a love affair with passion that perpetually raged at the highest level.  I can only reason that it was something I was born with. As a child I would happily down a second or third helping of liver with onions. Reveled in that gently popping sensation in ones mouth when teeth penetrated a cooked kidney. And longed for stringy curried goat flesh between my teeth. Eating meat, was a multi-sensory experience and each meal a psychedelic trip that left me in a gastronomically euphoric state.

I kid you not. 

Then one day everything changed. Despite what one friend claims, it wasn't <strong>one </strong>specific event that 'turned me'. Rather, over the years tiny cracks in my meat loving fortress were ever so slowly compromised until my resolve caved and vegetarianism was the only and most important thing before me. 

There are many ironies in choice. Not least, the fact that I always used to mercilessly mock vegetarians. I just didn't 'get it'. "No meat? Whyever would you choose to do that?! Something surely must be WRONG with you." To my brain, vegetarianism was like trying to explain Shakespeare in Lithuanian to a class full of Japanese students. I had no comprehension at all.

The first crack in my fortress had to be the emergence of <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001792/">v.Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease</a> { vCJD }, more popularly known as Mad Cow's Disease. I remember when cases started making news in the UK. Images of girls a mere shadow of the person they were a few weeks or months before. Non-communicative, demented, wasting away, fragile and most worryingly, incurable.
 
Appropriately, the public reacted with outrage. As for me..I wasn't quite sure what I felt. All I remember was being stunned that this could be the end result to someones short lived life and the reason, not the business end of a gun, but questionable farming practices. I stared stunned and open mouthed at many and any reports of vCJD sufferers and their inevitable deaths.

Although I was shocked, I wasn't motivated to make any change. Why should I? Meat had been my faithful escort for so many years, it hadn't personally cuckolded <em>me</em>, why would I leave it now?

Fast forward several years. A transatlantic move and many new life experiences under my belt. When you live in a country other than your place of birth, people ask a lot { of the same } questions. Sometimes out of general curiosity or due to necessity - ie. employers, doctors etc.  It was here that I learned that <em>"If, from January 1, 1980 through December 31, 1996, you spent (visited or lived) a cumulative time of 3 months or more in the United Kingdom."</em> You could not give blood. Not ever. The reason? The prevalence of Mad Cow's disease. 

This stunned me. I knew vCJD was a bad thing but to see in print from the medical industry that they full well realised the serious effects, and shockingly long incubation of the disease unsettled me. 

I wondered which meal, if any, had been my poisoned chalice..

But the thought didn't stay so much as eat away in the back of my mind. Like white noise from an oscillating fan in a warm summer room.

A move again. However, this time a lot of meditative thought was taking place. Trying to come to terms with oneself I realised  that what I was told a few years back by a best friend, that I was 'fundamentally the person I was always going to be' was incredibly true. And if true, then I was a person who valued loyalty, who staunchly and unapologetically stood up for what is right vs what is wrong. { A trait that makes me a good friend - apparently, and a frightening enemy - also, apparently }. Accepting this realism, resurfaced a creeping feeling.. that for me, buying flesh from the meat industry and consuming this sacrifice was...damaging. But I didn't have a repulsion to it, a motivating hatred that would cause me to divorce myself from this amorous lifelong affair.

A friend's dad loaned me a book he'd been reading. It was about <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Vegan-Ethics-Eating-Erik-Marcus/dp/0935526870">Vegan and the ethics of eating. </a> He thought it might interest me. As  I read the book my fortress caved and the flood came. I started looking everywhere and anywhere for information about factory farming processes and routines. I don't remember sleeping for well for days. Random memories popped into my head - the time I visited the family farm near where my mum grew up and toured their abattoir. I remembered thinking how wonderfully humane and thoughtful their process was and assumed that my { factory farmed } meat was handled the same way. 

I also remembered things a friend who worked in PR for a food division of a government agency had told me. Funny enough, she was also a vegetarian..

The information was overwhelming. My eyes were opened and I realised just what was happening to an indiscernibly large portion of the meat I had so willingly bought and consumed. We were entrusted as caretakers. Caretakers of this land and all that roams it - but what was going on was far from care. I was weighed down with empathy for any and all consumable animal.

Shocked at how little consideration was given to the quality of the 'end product' that I had  bought in trust, I felt betrayed, deceived and most importantly sickened. I literally dry heaved for a solid 36 hours. It was like my body was trying to expel over 20 years of meat. Unsuccessfully.

I felt guilty in a crime I was unaware I was an accomplice of. I felt helpless at the lack of control I then had about the exact condition of the meat that sat before me. There was only one answer and it was clear. From that day til now, I never ate meat again. { Save for a lapse over a bacon and egg butty 3 weeks later! }. 

My mind was set. Immoveable as a bulwark.

The first thing I painfully missed was the texture. I had always loved the way meat <em>felt</em> and found it hard to replicate the sensation of sinking ones incisors into its rugged warmth. But my mind triumphed over my heart and within a short period of time the desire for this once constant companion was just..gone.

Friends and family reacted forcefully. I endured accusations of having an 'eating disorder' { yeah..THIS craven little beast! }, to mocking, sarcasm and sadly ignorant comments. I saw a lot of my old traits in them and just hoped that one day they would learn to think more openly and acceptingly. Gladly some of them did, while others..probably never will. 

I found comraderie in others who were walking this same path. A vegan chef, vegetarian co-workers and others. They taught me, shaped me on where to shop, what to buy, how to live. They helped me find what worked for me. What gait I was going to take on this journey. Their help proved to be a foundation that I continue to grow on. 

From time to time my friend <a href="http://veganyte.tumblr.com/" title="veganyte tumblr">Veganyte</a> and I laughed at 'what crazy thing a meat eater said' to us.