Just racist things

Today, when my mother stopped for gas to a gas station, I went inside with my brother, two sisters and cousin. My cousin instructed us to pick out some snacks to eat. Of course we gladly and gratefully began to choose some snacks, I picked up a pack of donuts to read the ingredients and check if they complied with my vegan diet. They did not. As I placed them down, the lady behind the counter got off the phone. She asked my cousin if we children were with her. She said yes and the lady behind the counter told her that we must get out because we were stealing. Now, I am 17 and have never in my life stolen so much as a candy bar. I have always been the type of child to bring even a couple dollars found on the ground up to the counter in case someone lost it. This woman insisted that we were stealing (a completely ridiculous assertion as we had yet to leave the store with the food we held,) threatened to call the police on us. She would not ring up the items when we brought them up and she would not replay the footage she said she had of us stealing. Although my hands were empty; I was wearing a shortish, flowy, pocket-less dress, and I have never stolen anything in my life, I was forced to leave a gas station because I am a black person in Florida. I couldn't stop myself from crying when I got to the store. There were tears running down my face for at least 10 minutes after this.

Vegetarian vs Healthy

In the first three months of my life as a vegetarian, I have noticed a common misconception that cutting meat and fish out of one's diet results in a healthier lifestyle. While I am sure that many people have traded in meat for more nutritious food, simply cutting the consumption of animals does not directly ensure a healthy diet.
I believe myself to be an excellent example. I am a vegetarian, however what I consume is by no stretch of the imagination even vaguely healthy. The majority of my calories for both yesterday and today have been consumed in oreos, and the last several hundred in pie and tea. Despite the lack of flesh consumed in my diet, nutritional value is also excluded from my diet. Of course, I am flattered that people believe that I lead a healthy life although it is far from the truth.
Anyone can have a bad diet whether they are a vegetarian, omnivore, vegan, or carnivore.

Crying at work

The sharp, high ring of a cell phone cut through all of the background noise and I picked up the phone. It was not my mine, nor was it my ear to which I held the phone, but my co workers hands were full, rendering them useless. When the call was complete, I pressed end, and that's when I saw it. The background of her phone was cherry red with two thick streaks of blue, outlined in white, crossing diagonally through the middle. The confederate flag. And then I began to cry. My eyes welled up with tears which eventually spilled down my cheeks and I blinked to clear away the cloudy vision. But I was not crying for racial injustice. I was not crying for the lives of young, innocent boys lost to the prejudice of the nation. I was not crying for police brutality, inequality in the eyes of the law, and the perpetual fight to prove that black lives indeed matter as much as any other. I was not even crying for the parents, who heard the knock on their front door, sharp and cold, who didn't know what to except for so late an hour, who opened the door and were greeted by somber faces and a soft voice telling them what had happened, the life of their child, the light of their life, their pride and joy, is over, never to return. Flashing back through the years, the hours spent soothing the beautiful baby, teaching the toddler not to cry, watching him grow and learn, knowing that this child is, was, everything, and discovering that this didn't matter. Not enough to keep him alive, not enough for he who took this life to be blamed. No, my tears were not for the parents, for the future children who must learn to deal with bigotry in order to keep their lives, or for a past of oppression and abuse,

but because I was chopping onions.