Being vegan for three years was another factor in my husband and I becoming and feeling more and more isolated. We are no longer vegan, but we were exclusively vegan for three years. Veganism was something that came about very spontaneously. We had never been vegetarians. I never thought too much, or at least not seriously, about being vegan before making the lifestyle change.
During the pandemic, a few months into the initial lockdown, we were sitting at home and doing a lot of cooking for our family and feeling really unhealthy. We were not eating out much at restaurants or getting carryout at all. We actually had an au pair living with us for the first three months and we were all eating a very like meat-centric, animal product- heavy diet. I think I personally just became disguste with everything and needed to change. This feeling resulted in a spontaneous decision to become vegan.
At first, I didn’t know what to eat. I started with a handful of blueberries and just said “I’m vegan now.” and within about a day or two my husband joined me. We embraced the lifestyle quickly and it was easy to do that during the pandemic. We were at home for probably another year and a half after that working from home while the kids slowly went back to school.
Our life slowly went back into a higher gear like before the pandemic but we liked the new lifestyle. It gave us some things to research, like recipes, health topics and the environment and we just felt healthier. We were preparing a lot of meals together and we really liked it. We stayed strong because we had a support network with one another. We enjoyed being vegan but I think it was definitely isolating because we would go to parties and people would make jokes about being vegan. Or they would ask a lot of questions. We couldn’t really eat much of the food that was offered to us. We would try to bring vegan dishes when we were invited to something social. But I think it just kind of made us separate from most people since we already were not drinking alcohol.
So you add sobriety on top of veganism and it makes you a little bit of an oddball in some social circles. Sometimes I wondered if people thought I felt I was too good for people or felt superior because of my lifestyle. I never felt that way. It’s not like I didn’t like the other standard foods. It was just a decision that I was happy with at that time and made me feel good.
I didn’t really expect people to accommodate me but we would get frustrated at restaurants when they wouldn’t have a lot of vegan offerings. It is not really that difficult to adapt a menu to add a couple of things for vegan people to eat something besides a garden salad and french fries.
None of this matters anymore because we just spontaneously became not vegan, similar to how we started, when we were apart last summer. I was in a wedding in Italy and he was taking care of the kids at our beach house until I got home. We both independently informed each other that we were not going to be vegan anymore and that was the end. I think it is weird for some people because they remember you being vegan for a few years and then all of a sudden, you’re not. It just happened to me the other day. They are like, “Can you eat this now?” “Can you eat that?” Or they don’t ask, but they give you funny looks and wonder why you are eating a cheeseburger. So being vegan or stopping behind vegan just makes you stand apart from the crowd. That been an adjustment for everyone and just another factor that makes me feel like I don’t belong anywhere.
Charm Citizen 
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