My journey to becoming a vegan

I can't help but want to boast. I have been vegan completely for only 2 weeks now but I have never felt healthier, more energized and rich in good karma as I do now. I'm sorry if anyone doesn't like my vegan posts, but I want the world to see how amazing it can be for you and for animals. It can change your LIFE. Instead of being limited in what I can eat, being vegan has opened new doors and I feel like I have more of a variety of wholesome foods now than I did before. I cook more than I ever did and know exactly what is in all of my food. I do NOT miss dairy, (like I thought I would!) but I do realize how dairy contributed to my headaches, and brought my energy level down. Vegan ice cream is amazing and there are plenty of cheese alternatives I can deal with. Back when I ate meat I thought I could never give up chicken or bacon which was my excuse for years of not being a vegetarian. Then one day I actually hand delivered one of the pigs I worked with at Rutgers to a slaughterhouse because she was lame and couldn't be used for research anymore... and saw it from the inside. I saw the way she was yelled at and beat with a cane because she had a weak leg and couldn't keep up with the others. The last thing I remember was looking into her fearful eyes and having to say goodbye, knowing that I was leaving her to a horrible fate. After that I stopped eating bacon. Then one day I was walking to class on campus and someone handed me a free sample of ice cream. It was amazing. They told me it was vegan and handed me a pamphlet about chickens getting their beaks cut off. I learned that it's mandatory for chickens to get their beaks cut off so they don't peck at others in factory farms. From that day on, I never ate chicken again. All my time being "pescetarian" I still ate fish once in a while, a big fan of tuna and a sucker for salmon I turned my head the other way at the negative environmental impacts that overfishing can have and how much mercury and chemicals can be in fish too. Also, fish farming can cause a lot of pollution and is an unnatural environment for fish to be raised where they are pumped with chemicals to keep them healthy and make their flesh look a certain color. That's disgusting. So instead of excusing myself for eating fish "once in a while" I decided to eat it no more. This year I made the choice to give up animal products and go vegan. I learned about the pus and who knows what else that gets into milk.. after overly milked cows having their udders clamped on by machines get infected and sore. In order to even make milk, cows have to get pregnant, and their babies are snatched away, tortured and killed as the moms mourn the loss of the baby they never got to raise, and then get beaten and abused by factory farm workers who don't want to listen to loud cows crying out to their stolen babies. Eventually, the worn out dairy cows that had an entire life being hooked up to a machine, getting babies stolen from them, and being abused, get killed too because there's no use left for them. This is where DAIRY comes from. This is where CHEESE comes from. So just because you eat cheese, doesn't mean you're not hurting animals. So when eating yogurt, ice cream, or cheese, we think the savory goodness is cruelty free but that is not true. It's a product from cruelty just as much as meat itself. The industries are linked, and vegetarians who support dairy factory farming are just as guilty as contributing to cruelty as meat eaters. Learning this, I made it my new year's resolution to give all this up. I don't like being told what to do and I also don't want to tell others what choices to make. Everyone should make choices for their own beliefs and for themselves. But I do hope that you will consider opening your eyes and just being conscious of where food comes from. If you can't live without cheese or don't want to go vegan, but you do care about the welfare of animals, maybe just cut back on how much you buy, or get locally sourced cheese and dairy from local farms that are not part of factory farming. People have no idea what they are really eating and I just wish they knew. Because if everyone saw the inside of these factory farms, they wouldn't be able to eat it anymore either. Then maybe more than 1% of the world would be vegan, and those that are vegan like me wouldn't be ridiculed as much. Everyone should know the real reasons why people give up both meat and dairy, and possibly consider jumping off the bandwagon of supporting cruelty. If don't want to make a change, that's your choice. But if you are annoyed or offended by me posting this, because you don't want to HEAR about the tortures of the industry, I'm sorry but that's shameful and you're a coward for wanting to be ignorant of torture and keep supporting it without having to look it in the eye. It's true that one person may not be able to make a change on their own, but enough people standing up to a cause together can at the very least save a few animals <3