Ⓥ Veganniversary

I'm fairly certain I have now officially been vegan for ten years. I don't know for sure because, at the time, I didn't know how hard it was going to be for me to stick to it. I sort of expected it to be a gradual process, so I didn't pay attention to the exact date. I do know that it was sometime in the spring after I turned eighteen, so I think it's close enough. I wish I had paid attention to the date though, because it wasn't a gradual process. From the day I decided I wanted to be vegan, I have not eaten a single non-vegan thing (at least not intentionally. There were a few mistakes, some due to my own ignorance and some due to other people's).

I won't claim that it was never difficult, it was at times. I won't claim that I didn't have to make sacrifices, there were definitely things that were hard to give up at first. What I will say is that it is still the one thing in my life that I am absolutely certain of. Never has there been another decision that I have never once had to question. I have doubted, and still doubt, every other choice I have made in my life, even the most basic ones. Not this one though. I think after ten years, I can say with absolute certainty that I will never feel any less adamantly that leading a vegan lifestyle is the right thing to do.

Every year, there is more and more evidence showing the devastating effects of animal agriculture on the animals themselves, the planet as a whole, and on the health of the people who consume it's products. There are also more and more vegan options becoming widely available, all the time. Not to mention the positive changes that I still continue to see in my self and my body, even now.

Sometimes I think back on how much more difficult things were for vegans back when I first started out, and I'm a little surprised that I made it. There were so many roadblocks I had to face back then that simply aren't an issue anymore, the largest of which being my own lack of information on the subject. It was genuinely hard back then, unlike today when it is simply a matter of changing one's habits. Even so, I'm glad I didn't wait. The challenges that I faced in the beginning made me all the more committed to the cause and, if given the chance, the only thing I would change about my experience would be to do it sooner.

See, I actually didn't make that word up.