I am a vegetarian - have been for over five years now. I've always seen being a vegetarian or vegan as a respectable or noble thing.

After becoming a vegetarian, I soon found out that others didn't see it that way. The world I live in still doesn't fully accept or support my lifestyle. Now how fair is that?

There have been so many hardships with being a vegetarian, but at one point I realized my problem wasn't that I was a vegetarian, but that I was a Black vegetarian - a Black vegetarian attending a historically Black college at that.

I often get asked the dumbest questions: “How are you Black and don't eat chicken?” “So do you still eat crabs?” “When are you going to give up and go back to eating meat?”

People sometimes even go as far as actually stuffing chicken in my face. Tip for people considering doing this: don't, unless you want that chicken knocked on the floor.

In my family there are your typical Black family cookouts filled with ribs, fried chicken, crabs, and a bunch of other meat filled dishes. Then there's always the terrible holiday that is Thanksgiving, where there's meat EVERYWHERE! I literally thank God for the beautiful invention of mac and cheese.

Being a Marylander, there are crabs at every function and I really no longer understand the obsession, they just stink and make the people that eat them stink.

Similar issues occur when I hang out with my friends. “Hey, let's go to Bonefish Grill,” they say. Well, this means I'm having salad and will most likely be hungry again in two hours.

School is the worst place of them all. The worst day of the week is definitely “Fried Chicken Wednesday.” Chicken, chicken, and guess what else - chicken. Ultimately, my school caused me to hate my favorite food - pizza, because it is literally all I eat other than salad.

There was actually a reporting day in my school where food was served and of course there were no vegetarian options.

A teacher actually said, “Well you are the only vegetarian.”

I couldn't believe it. Just because I'm the only one means that I should go get my own food instead of being fed with the others. Also, why not have meatless options for yourself anyways?

I will never understand the desire that some black people have to be another statistic. Blacks lead the nation in heart disease, obesity, and diabetes, yet so many of them want to basically drown in a sea of greasy chicken, ribs, steak, and beefy burgers.