>I didn't realize it for 30 years, but it's hard to feel connected to nature, animals, and the environment when you are eating something you didn't kill yourself.

Really? I'd think that living surrounded by a modern society whose benefits you fully enjoy does a lot more to really disconnect you from nature than some notion of not killing the meat you ate.

You're still fully participating in the daily destruction of nature, animals and living things just about as much as anyone who eats meat, you've simply removed yourself symbolically a bit more from one specific expression of it, so you can (entirely subjectively) feel as if it somehow makes much of a difference for any real connection to the planet.

"You're still fully participating in the daily destruction of nature, animals and living things just about as much as anyone who eats meat" - I mean, that's categorically not true. All else equal the meat eater has a far more destructive daily impact on nature.

I can also pet a dog with a good conscience, because I don’t turn around and eat an animal just like it. I don’t see one as a friend and the other as food just because society dictates that