Eating at restaurants with friends

So I'm out to dinner with friends at a topas place. I knew going into it that I couldn't eat anything but whatever I ate before hand. I get there we have some drinks and everything is going alright. We sit down and then things proceed to get pretty uncomfortable. They all know that I'm a vegan and the whole time they are ordering I'm just sitting there quietly feeling more and more uncomfortable. When the food gets there all I can think about are all of the dead animals that I'm looking at. Then my friends all start in with the awkward comments of "so what can you eat," and "well, I'll just eat this one for you." They mean well but they just don't get it.

I don't really have a point to this post other than I wanted to talk about how isolating of an experience this is right now. I think that as a community we should give more space to explore the social impact of being vegan. Thoughts?