Dealing with bullies...

Joined
Feb 17, 2017
Reaction score
0
Lifestyle
  1. Vegetarian
Hi! I've vegetarian for a while now (a year and a bit). But I recently discovered I am slightly lactose and egg intolerant. It's not a serious intolerance, I can still eat it but if I eat too much I will get sick. Before I never ate a lot of dairy and eggs but since becoming veggie, I found cheesy scrambled eggs were my saviour and it made me quite ill...
So I made the choice to try veganism!
For the last two weeks, I have been trying to use up my dairy/egg products that are in the fridge (my mum does like mayonaise, so I have huuuuge jar to myself) and trying new vegan recipes.
I've felt healthier and great and I thought I could do this. Until a few days ago when I mentioned it to (someone who I thought was) a friend for the first time since making the decision. My mum asked a few questions when I told her about it, but it was genuine curiosity. These questions were malicious, intending to catch me out. She was really quite horrible about it, like it made me a different person. It's not like I was rubbing it in her face, she offered me chocolate and I declined, it only came up that I was trying veganism when she asked why I didn't want the chocolate. I don't want to push it in people's faces because of well, because of how even this turned out.
Since then she's been really awful to me, questioning my make up brands, shoes, all the food I'm eating, all I hear from her is "is that vegan?". It's starting to turn into bullying and really depresses me that my friend is being this awful about a choice that doesn't even affect her.
I can't stop talking to her because she is in my group for a project at college. We've been friends since before I became vegetarian and she was really supportive of it and even asked if I would share some recipes with her (she's a meat eater), until I told her I was pesco-vegetarian, then she got funny with me about it (honestly confused about this) but I cut that out of my diet a few months later because it was getting expensive for my mum to buy so many alternatives (she doesn't like fish either - so fussy).
I've told her why I'm trying it, because of my intolerance, but still. What can I do? What if I can't keep up being vegan and have to revert back and the bullying gets worse?

Has anyone else had a friend or family member turn on them because they became vegan? What did you do? Has anyone reverted back from veganism because of whatever reason? How did you deal with any backlash? I just need advice :(
 
You call this person a friend?
If you can't avoid her and she keeps on poking fun or making insinuations just ask her why she's doing it.
I'm Vegan for ethical reasons and have lots of eye rolling when I tell people, I guess this is because I was vegetarian in my twenties and reverted back to meat eating after I went travelling around the world for 18 months, this was back in the 90's so things weren't quite as easy as they are now.
But really, no one at any time for any reason should have to deal with what you consider to be bullying especially from someone who you thought was a friend.