Vegan for 7 years here. Went back to veggie after the birth of my baby daughter.
I gave up being a vegan nazi years ago - I have commented in meat-eating threads with politeness and respect - see:
Meat-Eating-Frenzy
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=3474602#post3474602
so I would appreciate the meat-eaters treating us the same way.
I know people in the UK, Spain, and France, who have been vegan for over 40 years, so it is certainly not a US thing. We've had vegan restaurants around for several decades too. It's only recently tho that the numbers have exploded and its become much easier to become veggie / vegan.
Interesting fact: historically, vegetarianism meant not eating anything of animal origin - i.e. what we now call veganism. So most references to people being vegetarian in old texts actually meant they were vegan.
Several major world religions and millions of people globally are vegetarian, and last time I checked, they were all still alive
One major Indian religion, Jainism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism
believe in killing nothing whatsoever. They won't eat anything where the plant was killed to produce the food. This means potatoes, root vegetables etc are out. They eat mainly seeds, fruits, above-ground crops etc.
When I used to find veganism heavy going, I went and read up on the Jains - always made me realise how mainstream veganism is, compared to the Jain diet.
To the OP, stick with it, always keep trying new foods - when I was vegan, I promised myself I would always try to eat something new or different every day, and I kept that up for about 4 years.
It really does help if you live or hang around with other veggies - solo is very difficult. Making changes slowly, and gradually reducing the amount of meat is how I first went veggie - no big changes.
My brother is vegetarian except for animals he's killed himself. He won't buy meat in the shop, but he goes out hunting sometimes in Cornwall (UK) with a bow and arrow or a knife and kills / finds a few rabbits and makes rabbit pie. I respect that.