Just Call Me Chicken-arian

Once upon a time I was a carnivore. Then one day around 2008, I had some steak sizzling on the stove and then when it was ready it did not look like food. The veins of fat, the markings on the meat, it just looked like a plate of carcass. I couldn’t explain it, but something happened in that moment and I have never had beef again.

That was what began my several year journey in becoming vegetarian. However, surprise, I am human and like other humans, who change their minds for a variety of reasons, I did as well.

We should be able to eat whatever we want and not judge others for doing the same. The reason I say that is this:

I was vegetarian- no beef, no pork, no chicken, not even fish, milk, or eggs. I wasn't actually vegan because I could not let go of cheese. Then one day a friend was eating chicken fingers.

That was my undoing, because before I knew it I asked her for a bite and then guess what? I left the restaurant with my own order of chicken fingers to go.

I wasn't sure if I was experiencing a protein deficiency, or if I wasn't doing the vegetarian thing right by giving myself options, all I know is that I changed my mind when it came to chicken. So my friends called me the chicken-arian because no one would not understand how I would eat chicken but not eggs, why I would eat chicken, but not drink milk, or why I wouldn’t eat a steak or a burger or pork chop.

Many times throughout the years I've had to exasperatedly look at people and say “Uh, because I don't want to.”

We know nowadays to not ask questions if someone says that they don't want an alcoholic beverage. We know better, at least I hope most of us do, to not try and twist their arm, to not try and guilt them into having “just one drink”.

We know that if someone says “I'm not drinking” you offer them a non-alcoholic beverage and you keep it moving.

So, how’s this for a crazy idea? Let’s try and do the same with food. I love chicken, it is present all the time in my meals except for breakfast. I was going out with someone who in the middle of a dinner blurted out that he could not stand picky eaters and how he didn't think that he coulld sit across from me anymore because all I ate was chicken.

I looked around and thought, “What’s the problem, I am just eating here.”

What do we say about marrying who you want? People should be able to marry whoever they love and if you don't like it, look the other way and let people live their lives their way and you live your life your way. You don't want to have the drink, you don't want to have the sugary cupcake that's going to mess up your diet or because you don't like sugar, great, perfect, fine by me, because who am I to say anything about what you put in your body?

Of course, don't get me wrong if you are my loved one and you are putting drugs into your body or too much alcohol into your body I'm going to try really hard to make sure that you are OK, and safe and if you need help I can try and help you. If you are getting to be morbidly obese, your health is at risk, your life is at risk, I won't be like people on those shows that just go and gets you the food, I will try and help you. The same way that that would the perfect moments for anyone to intervene on my behalf.

But I'm just talking about letting people live their lives. So we can feel free to eat as we please, date who we want, love who we want, travel to wherever we want.

If you love to go to Jamaica every year because that's where your family is from and because that's what makes you happy don't let people who've traveled all over Europe and South America make you feel like crap because you don't want to see the world-you go to Jamaica and you live it up because if it makes you happy who is anyone else to say otherwise about your happiness?

The point is who the hell cares why someone wants to do something versus why they don't? Let me eat my damn food! I've had people put fish in my face and go “just take a bite you don't know what you're missing”. Actually I do, I've had fish before, and I made my choice long ago not to eat fish.

Not that anyone owes anyone else any explanations, but just for this I will share about my whole fish thing. I had a traumatic experience with fish when I was a kid. My parents bought a fish tank with different kinds of fish and they didn't realize that certain ones could not mix with others and what happened the second day we had them was I woke up to greet my new pets and they had massacred each other. Pieces of fish corpes floated at the top of our new fish tank. I was 11 years old and I never ate fish again.

Funny or not, that's my haunting story, but that's my reason. But I don’t owe anyone my reason, and yet I have told that story to people many times as though I needed to make them understand.

How about, it's my decision, it's my body it's my choice. Well would you look at that, that applies to everything, isn't that funny?

I am tired of food in my face or a disapproving look when I order chicken again or the comments from people who say that I'm not worldly enough because I don't go to different types of restaurants and try different types of cuisines. You go off and do what you want; no one is stopping you. Enjoy the food, eat your lobster, eat your burger, drink the wine, have two desserts.

One time after I had my daughter there was someone who believed that I needed to be doing everything I could to drop the pregnancy weight, on their timetable apparently. So at a party I was having a piece of cake and this person came up to me and said but aren't you on a diet? I just looked around and said “Am I?”

How do you know what I'm doing ? Why is it your place to walk over to me and be in my business? How about we stop being so offensive to people for no reason.

We are in a pandemic, we are dealing with the effects of climate change, there are people that are homeless, there are children without homes, there are those fighting cancer, there are loved ones dying of Alzheimer's, there are people who get beat up by their spouses. There's a lot of shit going on and yet we pile on to what we already have to deal with, by wasting energy adding our own opinions about what other people are doing with their own private time and their own life??

Please, just let me be a chicken-arian. I have no problem with it and neither should you. Let’s please show each other some love.