Coming up on 6 years next fall, I have been vegan since the start of seventh grade. It is likely my upbringing in Ethiopia before I was adopted that was the cause of my disdain for meat. One second, I knew goats that felt like family, and the next, they are eaten as food. As a young child, it was difficult to compartmentalize my feelings for them as animals as both members of our family and in contrast, livestock. Later on, I developed an aversion to meat, especially steak because the longer I focused on the texture, the more it dawned on me that it was a chunk of a dead animal. Fast Forward, to sometime in 4th or 5th grade, I watched a documentary on the many reasons why one should be vegan. To my young mind, the content was striking, new, and compelling. Immediately, I announced to my Mom that I would be following this diet. To my non-vegetarian or vegan family, it was a shock to the system. Eventually, a month in, I couldn’t sustain the diet as I had converted without any transition or aid from someone else. Thus, for the following 2 to 3 years, I committed devoutly to a vegetarian diet, which came naturally to me due to my aversion towards meat. In that chunk of time, I had consumed so much content about the experience of those who are vegan and the impact this diet had on health, the environment, and the ethics of animal liberation. At the start of my 7th-grade year, I slowly weaned myself off of animal products in a strategic and thought-out way. This time, I had a much better idea of what the diet entailed. Since then I have been vegan and currently finishing my senior year of high school. Through this change in diet and rather personal experience (living with a family of meat eaters), a love of cooking was established and catapulted into something tangible and filled with passion. Naturally, my senior year-long project was about how one can explore vegan cuisine through a culinary lens. My diet helped me develop a deeper understanding of cooking, specifically the use of flavors: umami, various spices, herbs, etc. I’m still grappling with ways in which I can incorporate my learned experience as a vegan and the diet broadly into a tangible career. There is so much misinformation about this diet concerning nutrition. Nutrition in general is a point of contention in a society where celebrities are capable of selling diet pills and instigating eating disorders. I’m very much curious and passionate about the topic of health with what’s on our plate. It’s no surprise that this diet is increasing in popularity and accessibility. It is largely due to an increase in people not wanting to partake in environmentally destructive industries and products. Yet, there are far more nuanced positive implications of this diet such as health and animal liberation.

My awakening became evident to my parents and siblings on our trip to Hilton Head, South Carolina as part of our getaway last summer. Daily waves of isolation rose periodically as we moved about in the Marriott and restaurants we visited. Pulling my sister and brother to the side, I whispered, "Do you realize that we are the only Black people here?" From the first step of arriving at Hilton Head, I had an intense awareness of the racial demographic and the glaringly obvious lack of diversity; something I had normalized yet that made me incredibly angry and deeply hurt at that moment. Bringing attention to this, a minor observation by my family, but a difference of comfort or isolation for me, was when we collectively realized that something in me fundamentally changed. For so long, my brain waved this thinking under the pretense that my upbringing was already uncommon starting with two white parents: a loving family, nonetheless. Being adopted from Ethiopia into a predominantly White community as a young, Black girl, there was not enough access or exposure to the Black community. My persistent avoidance and conformity to this lack of diversity had finally caught up to me. Presented in front of me were classic signs of burn-out and imposter syndrome. Upon the family's first, domestic step outside of lockdown, I discovered how all the atrocities that resulted in lives lost, especially Black lives were fresh in my mind. To describe this shift in my worldview as a metamorphosis seems only right. Unfolding in front of me, are the unrefined and real, ugly truths of the world. There is imperfection. Before me was a domino effect; growing up in a prominently White community, insecurity towards my Blackness, George Floyd's death, and a painstakingly White demographic at a family resort. Collectively, in unpredictable and nuanced ways, this timeline in adherence to my adolescence being halted by lockdown made for an effective mental breakdown. Numbness ensued and I became desensitized toward life. It further teetered into nihilism. In this depressive state, I grieved my innocence and naivety towards humanity and unfortunately, some hope with it. In retrospect, this moment of transparency and reflection also gave me clarity about myself, a moment of self-actualization. I was guilty of not living my authentic self. Internalized racism halted and spoiled my self-expression as a young Black woman. It was as if my lockdown provided corrective lenses for the blurriness in my vision that I had been living with. Years later, the layers of anger and nihilism have not been shed. Should they, though? For so long, my voice had been silent, I had become complicit and confirmative to the way things are. Finally, I have an opportunity to prioritize autonomy. This anger must be nursed and preserved because, without it, I'll lose the meaning of life. One would only dream of prosperity if they've tasted or endured the evil that is corruption and oppression. Never will I allow myself to experience that numbness and dissociation towards life again. I would rather feel everything than nothing at all. That would not be living. Maybe I'll never know peace and will always find something faulty within this world, triggering my inner rage. If the current world will not celebrate and or acknowledge someone like me, I will prosper out of spite. Out of spite, I will crush and tear down the very pillars that enable corruption to draw another breath. This anger within me is an extension of my humanity. A cry for change.