Today, I’m starting a raw food and juice fast. Yes, you read all of those letters and the words they form correctly, and didn’t just *imagine* I’d said something that fucked-up.
Wait, who the hell am I again? Huh.
I was supposed to launch this new affront to normalcy yesterday, but then I woke up feeling like this:
Which is to say, like a really bad Art Deco print.
The entire front top half of my head felt as if a thousand Lilliputian peoples had snuck in during the night and taken up residence there with a thousand tiny pick axes, which they were using to BURROW DIRECTLY INTO MY SKULL. I hadn’t had a headache anything close to this since quitting dairy and meat several weeks back. It’s almost as if my body heard me talking about doing this raw juice fast bullshit AND DECIDED TO PROACTIVELY SABOTAGE ME. Stupid body.
I’m fairly certain there are people out there who’ll take this as some kind of evidence that what I’m doing is negative, unhealthy – nay, UNAMERIKUN. And I say that because it’s become pretty clear to me that there’s a decent-sized faction of people out there who are REALLY AND TRULY AND VERY UNCOMFORTABLE with veganism and actively pursuing a healthy lifestyle.
Though perhaps not as uncomfortable as they might be with this.
Or maybe they’re just uncomfortable with ME, specifically, doing those things – I haven’t fully sussed it out yet, honestly. But in either case, the truth is that my headache yesterday – the first I’ve had in weeks – was nothing compared to the crushing, debilitating pain, infections, and other health issues I’d experienced every single day prior to going vegan. I feel 1000% better than I did, and that’s the truth.
So suck it, haters!
Be warned, this is what comes up when you search for “Suck It” on the internet. Oh and also this.
I’m not sure what people have to be afraid of in this. Is it just a fear of change? Are they eskarred that I’m going to start playing hacky sack, listening to the Grateful Dead, wearing Teva sandals, and talking about aligning and color-coding my chakras? Or maybe, just maybe, is it that my experience is making them think a bit more than they’d honestly like to about their own choices, their own health? Because listen, don’t get it twisted: I don’t care what you or anyone else eats or doesn’t eat, and I’ll never be a judgey self-righteous asshole about crap like that. Why? Because I honestly just don’t give a shit what you do. Period. Everyone has the right to treat their bodies how they want, and what you do is none of my concern. None.
HOWEVER… it seems to me that people who truly and honestly feel great eating giant slabs of beef and Extreme Spicy Cheese Doritos and a cornucopia of fried breads wouldn’t have any cause whatsoever to feel threatened by or uncomfortable with *my* choices, were that really the case. Because if there’s nothing wrong with eating that way and you DO feel great, doesn’t my turn to veganism just mean MOAR DELISHISH DORITOS FOR YOU?
I said *I* wouldn’t judge. But Judgmental Cat can’t help it – it’s who he is. Fish gotta swim, right?
It’s funny though – vegans (and other people demeaningly deemed “health nuts” (NUTS! As in CRAY-CRAY! GEDDIT??!)) invariably get pegged as being the Snotty Judgmental Ones, called out for condescendingly looking down their noses at troglodite non-vegans. But if anything, I’ve found the exact opposite to be true. The vast majority of what I’ve heard since going public with the changes I’m making in fact falls along two lines:
1. Good for you, but now I’m going to slowly back away from you warily like you have the plague, because suddenly you’ve gone from being someone I understand to becoming someone I couldn’t possibly relate to (because, clearly, the basis of my relationships with most other humans is about what we eat… Uh, WHAT?).
2. Gee, I wish I could stop eating X/Y/Z things as well, but I can’t, or have convinced myself I can’t (because that’s easier), so your lifestyle changes are making me simultaneously envious AND filled with profound self-loathing. I am, in essence, JUDGING ME FOR YOU. And based on my own judging of me projected onto you, I think you think you’re better than me. BITCH.
MINDFUUUUUUUUCK.
Though it goes without saying, not as much of a mindfuck as this.
I didn’t really expect this sort of response, but whatever. I honestly never expected to be in the position of getting so sick that I had no choice but to make serious changes to what I eat and how I live in the first place. And not so I could feel superior to everyone else, or flaunt my ULTRA MEGA AWESOME HEALTHINESS, but rather just to feel something approaching what you all know as normal, baseline. To not have to take 5 different kinds of drugs every day just to be meh, functional, I guess. If you don’t have to do what I have, more power to you, you’re lucky. But me? I’m not so lucky.
The raw/juice fast is more or less an experiment. No one can live life on a fast, and so it’s intended to be a toxin-cleansing sort of thing undertaken for about a week. I get that even terms like “cleansing” and “fast” and “toxin” sound all crunchy-silly-hippie to many of you, but in fact these sorts of fasts have been undertaken by peoples all over the world since the beginning of civilization on our fair planet. This isn’t something weird or new (or New Age for that matter) or fadish – it’s how human beings have purged bad (or just, ahem, backed-up) or “toxic” stuff from their systems for as long as we’ve been around to have systems to purge. I’ve never done this or anything close to this before, mind you, but I’ve heard and read good things (about the results, NOT about the experience itself, which I gather is about as fun as, umm, NOT EATING FOR A WHOLE FUCKING WEEK), so why not at least give it a shot? If one thing has become clear to me over the past several months it’s that what we put in our bodies can and does have a huge impact on our health, so it stands to reason that ‘cleaning house’ on a physical, systemic level might be a positive. Well, except for the fact that apparently I can’t be more than 3 rooms away from a bathroom at any time over the course of the next couple of days. Because, you know.
This is someone’s bathroom. Sadly, not *my* bathroom. Then again, this might be a bit TOO exciting for a bathroom. Is… is that a Toilet-laptop? JESUS.
Anyway, that’s my thinking at this point. And I know it’s not expected or particularly badass to be all overly concerned with one’s health, but hey, cut me some slack, a’ight? If you’d been as sick and scared as I was until a few weeks back (at one point I was fairly convinced I had cancer, and FYI, being fairly convinced you have cancer is pretty much the most terrifying shit EVER), you too would probably be more than a little enthralled with feeling healthy again, and perhaps a bit invested in finding ways to ensure that continues. I’ll try to not get silly about it, promise. Well, at least not silly in the bad, SIRIS BIDNESS sort of way.
Updates on Batshit Hippie Raw Juice Cleansing Fast 2011palooza forthcoming, as warranted! Hold onto your toilet seats, it’s gonna be a crappy bumpy ride!
