Ever since I was little, I always thought everything had to be put in a category. Maybe it had to do with my family or the school I went to, but for some reason I always thought that everything was marked and put into its own box--clean cut--no blurred lines.
Paulina (me): athletic, good at test taking, likes talking to people, hates bananas
My mom: a nurse, big curly hair, is always wearing earrings, loves to dance at parties
My best friend: blonde, doesn't like girly clothes, loves playing horses in the school yard, not allowed to have sleepovers
I guess when I was younger, I just liked thinking that everything was definite and had order and was purposeful and clear.
It was around 2013 when my mom went to her hair dresser and came home showing us this massive bald patch in the back of her head. My family was extremely shocked considering my mom has the fullest and prettiest curly hair. She went into an immediate state of nonstop googling.
She had come across a documentary called Forks Over Knives. This basically highlighted the information around the benefits of a plant based diet and how it could cure illnesses and better a person's overall health. (Now I need to mention here that my mom is Puerto Rican and my dad is Italian. My dad also used to work as a chef in an Italian restaurant, so when I say my parents are good cooks and we eat good... I mean it.) She made my whole family watch it, and little did I know that from that day on, her life would completely change. My mom pulled a complete 180 and dropped all animal products from her diet:
-No meat
-No dairy
-No eggs
-No basically anything that the average American diet consists of
And we all thought she was insane.
Little did we know that a few short weeks later, her random bald spot began to grow hair again, almost by magic... except it wasn't magic. She was just actually nourishing her body with whole foods and improving her immune system to fight whatever the hell was making her hair fall out. (It's kind of funny how this is shocking to most people, like... who could have thought eating healthy can lead to... BETTER HEALTH?!?!)
ANYWAYS...
I went the next year or so ignoring her eating habits and eating traditional American foods. It was Lent of 2015 and I decided to try and go vegan for the next 40 days. It honestly wasn't that hard considering I basically had my own personal chef at home. I remember finishing those 40 days feeling so excited to get back to eating how I used to.
Except.
I never actually did.
I don't know why, or how, or if I purposefully did it or not, but I never went back to eating meat. I ate fish, eggs, dairy, etc. I just never wanted to go and eat chicken parm or a Steve's Steak like I used to.
No particular reason, I just didn't want to.
After a couple of months, I began to notice something that the people around me were constantly doing and it really pissed me off.
"So why exactly don't you eat meat?"
"You eat fish... that's basically the same as chicken"
"So are you vegan or vegetarian?"
"Are you sure you're eating healthy? Like where do you get protein?"
I didn't like that people thought they could just come and roast me because I wasn't eating the same as them.
It's almost like they felt that I was insulting them by eating differently. But I didn't really care how they ate... so why did they care how I did?
Probably the most annoying things I still encounter is when people say: "So what exactly are you?"
I'm assuming they want to know if I'm vegan or vegetarian or pescatarian or ovotarian or whatever the hell else people like to call themselves (or call others).
I just wanna scream "I'M PAULINA!"
Since when were we categorized by the foods we put in our bodies???
And the worst part about this all? I used to do this same exact thing to anyone else who had a special diet. (Especially to my mom when she first began) But why?
I don't know.
Maybe because I liked the idea that everyone has his/her category that they need to be placed in.
Maybe I was just nosey and intrusive.
Maybe I was just ignorant of that fact that the way someone eats doesn't really have anything to do with their character or personality and it just had to do with their food preferences.
When my mom would eat a dessert with a bit of dairy in it, I would yell at her because "she's not allowed to have dairy if she's vegan". Or if she wanted a piece of fish--nope, that's definitely against the vegan rules.
But thats the PROBLEM!
My mom never called herself vegan. She was simply eating in a way to better herself in the long run.
It was the rest of us that were labelling her, for no reason other than the fact that she was different.
So quit it with the labels. And quit expecting people to have hard answers and background stories to why they made a certain decision in their life.
I don't know why I don't eat meat. I just don't want to. I don't know what food consumer category I fall into, I don't even know if I actually fall into one. But who cares?
That's a good enough answer for me.