Yup, I'm Veganizing

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I've been dabbling in vegetarianism for a number of years now. I think the first time I committed was in eighth grade, a battle which took a lot of convincing for my parents to accept and a decision I stuck to for a fair bit of time. Since then, it's been on and off; my enthusiasm for vegetarianism has never really waned. Rather, my wishy-washy-ness has been more a product of peer pressure, self-consciousness, and a poorly formed rationale for my decision. In other words, I didn't have the ideological oomph to keep me firmly planted (no pun intended) in a lifestyle that just, well, felt right.

This past fall I returned to college as a sophomore, and even had a brief stint on the cross country team (an experience which taught me a number of things, among which is included the fact that HILLS ARE THE DEVIL.) While I was panting away up and down the streets and bike paths of southern Virginia, I was fortunate enough to meet a new friend on the team. He was also an English major, and truly one of the nicest guys I've ever known. Beyond his cordiality and easygoing nature, though, he is an intensely ethical person, someone whose manner of living is reflective of his beliefs and principles. Put simply, he walks the walk he talks about.

Over the course of our sweaty, ravenous team carb-fests following practice, I learned that my friend was a vegan. Since I've always been interested in nutrition and health, and since a conversation with me is more like a game of twenty questions than a dialogue, I was able to learn a lot from my friend about why he made the choice he did. Long story short, he said that he realized that he could not claim to believe and support the causes and principles he said he did without going all the way and making this tangible change in his life. With each conversation we had, I really felt my heart nodding along with my head in agreement: like vegetarianism, veganism just seemed to make sense, but only more so.

However, there were a few things preventing me from making the full commitment to veganism:

• My past wishy-washy-ness. I was terrified that someone would call me out as a fraud, lift some wall tapestry revealing the hidden door to my sordid inconsistency with plant-based living. 
• At the time, I was still trapped in the restrictive mindset of my eating disorders. I couldn't see all the vast implications or understand the holistic effects of veganism; I was blind to everything but the numbers on the scale or the tag of my jeans. 

So I didn't go vegan last fall. The resonance I felt during that conversation never fully disappeared, only dwindled to a flickering flame whose heat I could only feel if paid attention to it. But instead of nurturing that instinct towards something that felt so fundamentally right, I spent my year stuck in the mire of depression, bulimia, isolation, hurt, sadness, and fear. Things continued this way until the spring, when I began to realize that I

couldn't 

fucking

live 

like

this. 

I realized that I would need to change, or I would die, be it physically from the abuse of my eating disorder, or spiritually from the abuse of my depression and destructive coping mechanisms. 

I hit rock bottom; and in the quietness I discovered in that low state, I felt that forgotten flame again. 

I sensed that resonance, and this time, I listened to it. 

Since then, I've been researching veganism extensively, especially the high carb raw vegan lifestyle. Unlike my past research, though, this research has exploded to create a whole body of support beyond the purely dietary and physical results of this lifestyle. I'm discovering the spiritual, mental, psychological, environmental, and moral implications of making the stand for veganism. As one who believes in the incredible power of education to change lives, I'm finding that what I'm learning makes it really, really difficult to think about intentionally living in ignorance of the existence of these implications. But more than the threat of living dishonestly, the thing that's motivating me most as I do my research is a theme I've discovered as a core theme of veganism: 

reconnection. 

To the world, 

to God, 

to self. 

Now, that's what I call humbling.