I was vegan for 15 years. From mid-2003 all the way until 2018, all I ate was plants. Cold plants, hot plants, raw plants, cooked plants. Unrecognizably processed plants. Grains, grains…so many grains. Soy products at almost every meal.
It makes perfect sense that I, of all people, went vegan because I’d already been vegetarian for many years. From 1995 until 2003, I ate everything but meat. No seafood, no ham on pizza, not even my mom’s chicken soup. Nah. Once I made my decision at the age of thirteen, I was done with eating animals.
I committed really hard to the decisions I made. There was nary a slip-up; never a teen-aged craving for cheese or a drunken bite of chicken wings at one of the many, many pubs I frequented with friends. No, from the age of thirteen onwards I was The Vegetarian with a huge capital V.
So, you can see why another couple of decades of veganism wasn’t much of a stretch. I loved the challenge of finding great vegan recipes and restaurants and products in grocery stores. I loved shopping at health food stores (I still do) and constantly stimulating myself by trying new (plant)foods and supplements and body care products.
Veganism is a quagmire unto itself. It was never just about food; I thought of it as a conviction and and personal crusade. I could never imagine a reality in which I quit being vegan. But cracks started to appear in my gauntly facade after 10 years of veganism. I got pregnant and suddenly did crave eggs, and choked back a few tinned oysters in the hopes of encouraging a healthy pregnancy. (I recall shame-eating a hard boiled egg in the back room of my food service job and realizing that hell might just have frozen over, but that egg was worth it.)
Then I miscarried. I went back to eating vegan, but nothing ever felt quite the same after that birthing experience. Animal rights felt just as intricately knotted up with food consumption as human rights as I learned more about the global implications of my individual food choices.
Plus, I had just had a fucking miscarriage: broiler chickens looked less like a horror movie and more like an unpleasant and unavoidable fact of large scale capitalistic human existence.
In time, we completely ran out of money and started dumpster diving at health food stores; high-quality animal foods occasionally came of those efforts. Interestingly, I somehow powered through an entire healthy pregnancy and childbirth and breastfeeding on nothing but plants, which almost reaffirmed my continued devotion to the big V…
Ah! But then, my once perfect teeth quickly started to cavity and break. Shortly after that, I was stricken with a year-long, mysterious chronic illness that prompted me to throw my last remaining shreds of ethical caution into the breeze and try eating some animal foods in an informed attempt to heal myself.
As far as I can tell, it worked. I have occasional health issues - we all do. But, I immediately stopped wasting away, and feeling uncomfortable with my own self-imposed dietary restrictions when I ate a few hard-boiled eggs and cans of sardines. Nowadays, I eat meats and cheeses with carefully reverent abandon. I eat to feel alive. Vegetables on their own simply don’t do that for me anymore.
Since I started eating animals, I have felt less alienated, more loving, and just a little more human.
For now, at least, that's good thing.
An enjoyable read on your quest to feel well. If we listen carefully to our bodies it will tell us what nutrition we need. I’m listening more and more myself.
Always evolving!