What’s a topic or issue about which you’ve changed your mind?
Long ass tory time: back in the early to mid aughts, we were pretty housing unstable. That’s a very nice way of saying we were homeless. Like, really bad.
Anyway, I have always had a personal battle with food. Food insecurity is a massive trigger for my anxiety.
While my family and I were “exploring housing opportunities”, I needed some semblance of control over just one little piece of my life. Just one. So I stopped eating meat. I just flat out became a vegetarian for about four years.
It helped that I worked a lot of fast food jobs in those years. I could get food at work, or buy some stuff that we couldn’t normally afford when I was working… I think I got up to three jobs at the same time at one point? Yeah! McDonald’s, nannying, and housecleaning. I was gone basically from 0430 to 2100.
Now, since I was gone almost all day, almost every day, I had a backpack that had a jar of peanut butter and a thermos for water. Sometimes I had bread or crackers, too. I also had a massive bottle of Flintstone vitamins that I would take every other day or so, just to try and keep going. Looking back, I was horrifically overwhelmed, traumatized, and drowning.
But! I lived. Not just survived, but thrived…. Right up until I collapsed from an absolutely hellish mix of exhaustion, electrolyte imbalance, iron-deficiency anemia, and “mild” malnutrition.
I don’t remember much. I remember that I was worried about missing work, especially more than one day. I don’t remember how many banana bags they went through. But I was in the ER probably two to four days. It was a blur. I kept the hospital socks for the longest.
All this to say that the doctor initially scolded me for my eating disorder and restrictive diet choices. I didn’t try to explain, just nodded and said I’d start reintroducing meat products to my diet.
So I laid off the meat-consuming moratorium, but kept my love for Morning Star Farms black bean burgers and their chicken nuggets.
Postmark Wonderland 