Finding Truth in Truth

Truth. You’d think it would be simple, right? Look up the answer in a book, ask an expert, or even ask your mom. Moms know everything, after all. However, when it comes to food, I can’t seem to find the truth. Or, perhaps, there are too many truths, which seems to be the case when it comes to food. There are two major schools of thought that I am constantly bouncing between: traditional and vegan.

The first of these schools is the traditional diet rich in animal fat, bone broth, raw milk, and fermented foods. The traditional method of eating is endorsed by Weston A. Price, Sally Fallon, and many others. According to their research, people thrived on these diets throughout the centuries past and it is just now with our standard American diets (SAD) that we are starting to have diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer. The proponents of these foods claim that our health as a nation is declining because of the increase in consumption of white flour, sugar, processed foods, and genetically modified foods (GMOs). Their solution is to eat a diet rich in the things that most doctors tell us to avoid – fats. Butter, meats, eggs, and yogurts are all staples of this diet. However, these are the foods labeled as “problematic” by our trusted sources such as the American Heart Association.

On the other hand, many weight loss, diet, and health coaches emphasize vegan or vegetarian diets as the most beneficial at reducing risk for man-made disease and for weight loss. Reduction of risk plus a healthy weight equals longevity, right? Vegan diets seem very new age and trendy. They seem to be part of a solution for our growing health problems. They restrict animal products in all forms and emphasize organic fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and some soy products. The downfall of the vegan diet, however, seems to be party its restrictiveness and partly the fact that very few, if any, soy products are available from non-GMO crops. The premise of this lifestyle is to feel good about what you are eating and feel good about helping the planet through a reduced carbon footprint. Also, you will be saving the lives of thousands of animals by not eating them.

The confusion continues… Switching between these two lifestyles, since they are such polar opposites, can wreck havoc on the body. The best choice seems to be to choose one lifestyle and stick with it, but the original question remains: how does one know if the truth presented by authorities is truly true?

Instead

 

I look inside the depths of my soul but instead of light there's just a black hole.

I look within to find out who I want to be but instead I find the empty shell of me.

I seek solace in the words of men of God but instead I find lies and fraud.

Then I turn to the caressing whispers of nigh but instead I find they are only saying goodbye.

I seek wisdom from pages long since yellowed with age but instead I find merely lies on the page.

I pull myself close to heal my wounds but instead I feel the pull of the moon.

I heed its call with my soul as offering but instead I find myself more suffering.

I came to you then with my soul laid bare but instead you turned and left it there.

Instead of love, instead of life, instead of wisdom, I have this life.

It's a life I can't live for another day so instead I will just be on my way.

Thinking about food too much…

I think I may have an eating disorder of some sort. I think about, read about, and obsess over food constantly. I get worked up over what is "best" whether it is traditional foods along the vein of Nourishing Traditions and Weston A Price, vegan eating because it is not cruel to animals, or even the other restrictive diets like gluten free. I read about them, study them, research them to the ends of the internet, and finally I get so frustrated and confused that I binge.

 

In high school, I fought with mild anorexia - I wouldn't eat but maybe 500-800 calories a day for weeks at a time, and then I would binge. I would carry around a huge bag of M&M's and eat on them all day. I would hide in the bathroom (still do) and eat so that people wouldn't see me. I never purged, so I don't think it was bulimia, but I thought I was a huge cow at 120 pounds (5'7").

 

Now, I am grossly overweight and still obsessed about food. I read and study things like the Weston A Price site that pushes bone broths, meats, raw dairy, etc. And then I vomit when I try to cook meat. I just cannot stand the appearance or smell of raw meat. Now, if I go through the Chick-fil-A drive thru, I can put back some chicken nuggets.

Then I start to thinking maybe I should just give up meat. I research vegetarianism and then read about vegans and think, "Gosh, being just vegetarian or just eating fish isn't even close to good enough! I should be a vegan!" And then I give that a go and get frustrated and binge again.

I know that most, if not all, eating disorders have most to do with control, so that's one reason I think I have an eating disorder.

Since I often hide and eat (or hit a drive thru and then hide the "evidence" of my excursion), I started looking and found this online:

Binge eating disorder (BED) - when a person can't control the desire to overeat and often keeps the extreme eating a secret. People with this eating disorder feel no control during the times they are eating to excess. During binge eating, a person may eat more quickly than normal, eat until feeling discomfort, eat large amounts of food when not hungry, and eat alone. Unlike bulimia and anorexia, a person doesn't try to rid the body of extra food by doing things like vomiting, fasting, or exercising to the extreme. Because of this, many people who have this illness are overweight. A person can feel , shame, and guilt during a binge, which can lead to bingeing again, causing a cycle of binge eating. Like with anorexia, people with BED can fear gaining weight, want to lose weight, and dislike the way their bodies look. BED most often starts in the late teenage years or early adult years. Some experts believe BED is the most common eating disorder. The illness often develops soon after extreme weight loss from a diet. BED can be hard to diagnose and can be mistaken for other causes of obesity (being overweight). People with BED are often overweight because they maintain a high calorie diet without exercising. Medical problems can happen, like those found with obesity, such as high cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, and diabetes. BED also increases a person's risk for gallbladder disease, heart disease, and some types of cancer. People with BED often suffer from depression.

I also found this information, which seems to relate to my complete obsession with figuring which school of thought is the "Healthiest" option.

Orthorexia Nervosa
Many of the most unbalanced people I have ever met are those who have devoted themselves to healthy eating. In fact, I believe some of them have actually contracted a novel eating disorder for which I have coined the name "orthorexia nervosa." The term uses "ortho," meaning straight, correct, and true, to modify "anorexia nervosa." Orthorexia nervosa refers to a pathological fixation on eating proper food.
Orthorexia begins, innocently enough, as a desire to overcome chronic illness or to improve general health. But because it requires considerable willpower to adopt a diet that differs radically from the food habits of childhood and the surrounding culture, few accomplish the change gracefully. Most must resort to an iron self-discipline bolstered by a hefty dose of superiority over those who eat junk food. Over time, what to eat, how much, and the consequences of dietary indiscretion come to occupy a greater and greater proportion of the orthorexic's day.
The act of eating pure food begins to carry pseudospiritual connotations. As orthorexia progresses, a day filled with sprouts, umeboshi plums, and amaranth biscuits comes to feel as holy as one spent serving the poor and homeless. When an orthorexic slips up (which may involve anything from devouring a single raisin to consuming a gallon of Haagen Dazs ice cream and a large pizza), he experiences a fall from grace and must perform numerous acts of penitence. These usually involve ever-stricter diets and fasts.
This "kitchen spirituality" eventually reaches a point where the sufferer spends most of his time planning, purchasing, and eating meals. The orthorexic's inner life becomes dominated by efforts to resist temptation, self-condemnation for lapses, self-praise for success at complying with the chosen regime, and feelings of superiority over others less pure in their dietary habits.

Maybe I am just a messed up mess…but maybe I need to go to meetings!      AAAAAHHHH!

Perhaps I think about grammar too much…

The Preposition Song

Over, around, under, beside

Watch that plane fly high in the sky.

Preposition, preposition

Won’t you give it a try…

Below the sun, above the trees

Flying through with the greatest ease.

Preposition, preposition

Try it and you’ll see.

Around, about, through and through

Preposition, I’m gonna sing it to you.

Preposition, preposition, you know it’s true!

So preposition, let’s review.

The plane can fly over, under, all around

And when it lands on the ground,

You will be so very proud.

You’ve accomplished your mission with great ambition

Of learning about the preposition!

~Sing a Song for Me~

Sing a song for me
and let me hear the words written for my ears
Words to dry my tears and words to ease my fears
Sing a song for me
I’ll listen to the melody, let it move my body
Listen to the harmony, let it stir my soul
Sing a song for me
Chase away the nightmares that shatter my dreams
A lonely place where nothing is what it seems
Sing a song for me
and look me in the eyes.
Sing a song for me
but please don’t sing me lies
Sing a song for me
until the firelight dies

I thought of you today...

I thought of you today as I do once in a while

Memories of our times spent together always make me smile

The years have passed in the blink of an eye

But, my friend, I am not ready to say goodbye

Perhaps in God's garden we'll meet again someday

For your life and our memories, each day I pray

Fearful of forgetting the way we were so many years past

Fearful of a day coming that may be our last

The secrets we shared and the chances we took

Will live in my heart like an unfinished book

Across these many miles I wish you could know

That the world is not ready to let you go

In The Night

The sound is fury pouring down on my head.
The roar in my ears I have come to dread.

I hardly can think in the still of the night.
Those are the times my fears come to light.

With the blackness all around and static in the air,
My thoughts can’t help but to tarry there.

I wish them away; I wish for sweet dreams
But they visit me anyway, it always seems.

These thoughts consume me and lead me astray
But this too shall pass I try to say.

Without certainty and without conviction
I test the waters of my addiction.

Timidly at first and then I just dive in
And give my mind to the hopelessness within.

As I sink below the surface, I think it is best
But that’s not a theory I really want to test.

So I let my mind wander in the darkness of the night
Because only then does my body know what’s right.

For my body is at rest, however light
And my mind is spinning, preparing for flight.

It’s in these moments that the truth simply hides
But with the rising of the sun comes the changing of the tides.

I suppose this life is always ebb and flow
Much like my thoughts and the directions they go.

Dreamland

Darkness rolls in like thick, black smoke billowing from a fire. Jack Frost's wintery kiss caresses my cheek, and my eyes flutter open. I am standing outside, but my gaze is immediately drawn upward to the explosions of brilliant colors lighting the night sky. I stand watching in awe as the colors explode with a fury and then fade into the milky darkness. The sound of the thundering explosions is tempered quickly by shrieks and peals of laughter all around me.

My attention is quickly drawn away from the heavens and back to the earth. There is a figure looming ahead in the distance. It is a character like none other that I have ever seen. Its face is grotesquely over imagined like some caricature come to life. The children do not fear. They run past me with squeals of delight and surround the masked figure. His eyes seem to be fixed on me, so I turn trying to escape his gaze. The booming overhead continues… louder, ever so loud.

I am suddenly aware of the icy pavement under my bare feet. I seek refuge from its callous embrace. The lights in the sky above are reflected in the black water of the lagoon. Their colors are distorted with each ripple of the water as the cool wind ruffles the surface. The same wind sings through the trees and whips my gown around my legs. It is calling to me.

Through the booming of the explosions overhead, I hear the echo of men yelling for me to stop. They are rushing toward me. I test the water with one bare foot. It is frigid, numbing. As my pale flesh succumbs to the liquid blackness, the lights play along my skin drawing me forward. The water laps gently at my thighs as I wade in deeper. It is to my waist before the men reach the edge. They do not dare risk the icy blackness. I reach the center of the lagoon and turn to see in the distance a throng of people gathered to watch the explosions in the heavens. They laugh and shriek gaily.

At the edge of the water, the men turn to see the final display of lights. My gown drifts behind me. It billows up like a great soft pillow and I am tired -- so very tired. I lay back onto the pillow and I can feel the icy water flow over my shoulders as I close my eyes. I take a breath and succumb to the night.

I reach out with my fingertips and feel the cool damp blades of grass. I put my hand to my cheek. It is moist. The dew has fallen. The fireworks show has long since ended and all that remains is the smell of firing powder and a haze in the sky. I am alone in the night. I must have fallen asleep because I had a dream last night.

Light of Passion

I have always seen passion as a light that shined brightly on an object. Whatever people are passionate about, that is where their light shines. It is like a flashlight. The place where the beam of light is directed is the most illuminated although the areas nearby are also brightened a bit. The problem with me is that my passion does not seem to work that way. I shine my light on something that I think I am passionate about, but it's reflected. It's like shining a light on a prism. Fragments of the light shoot off into different directions illuminating things all around it. The light may not be as bright or as intense, but the light still shines.

My trouble, I think, comes from the fact that I cannot see the prism that the light is reflecting off of and so I try to focus on the many beams of light that are reflected from it, but I cannot see in that many different directions at once.

If I look into one fragment of light, I see wonderful books… endless books. Some of them are crisp and new with pages never turned. Others are older, tattered, with yellowing pages that seem to have a thin layer of air between each leaf that makes them almost just turn under their own power. I see leather bound classics and ancient letters between lovers. I see a roaring fire and hear its crackling as the wood turns to ash. There are rows and rows of glorious books with stories and characters and hopes and dreams and fears all waiting to be unlocked. But there's never time…. Never enough time to even try to read all of them, to try to experience the wonder and exhilaration that is bursting from the pages. They call to me softly, but I must turn away.

If I look into another fragment of light, I see bolts of cloth. There's every color and pattern and texture of cloth… cotton, muslin, linen, silk…. All waiting to become something from my fingertips. There are designs and patterns waiting to be created. But they are static, unmoving… because it is up to me to create them. But there is no time.

Another facet of light holds only an empty room with a single desk in the center. The room is quiet and brightly lit. I step toward the desk and my footsteps echo in the quiet room. There are several objects on the desk. As I look closer I see pens and paper. The paper is clean and white and beckons for words to transform it. I walk still closer to the lone desk and a pen moves nearer to the paper of its own accord. I hear scratching as the pen feverously carves black words into the white paper. Faster and faster the pen moves as I watch, spellbound. Before my eyes the page becomes darker and darker with the blackness of the pen's ink until the rich blackness spreads across the desk and drips down onto the gleaming floor pooling like blood. The rivers of ink creep toward my bare feet and I quickly step back in fear. But the ink stops and the pen drops to the ground. The room opens up before me and I am able to take in the whole picture. The rivers of ink spell out words…. "no time." And then they fade away… a story imagined yet not written… a story soon forgotten.

Yet another fragment yields a different passion. This passion is that of the skin, the flesh, the heart. I see bodies pressed together, fiery on cool white sheets. The rhythm of the dance is steady, that of a low drum…. Boom, boom, boom, boom…. The sound speeding and slowing as the bodies move in a harmony that they themselves create. One figure cries out and rises up over the other arching and panting until the screams of ecstasy are quieted. Soon the figures relax and the beating rhythm becomes only the pounding of their hearts thump, thump, thumping in unison. As a soft breeze cools their sweat dampened skin, they close their eyes. I think they may be sleeping until one figure rises from the sheets with wild eyes searching for me…. "There's never time for you" she whispers and my world fades away.

I am returned to the prism of light and I no longer wish to see what sadness the beams hold… what passions they extinguish in my heart. However, I cannot stop myself from peering into another shaft of light. In this light, there is a schoolroom. Clean chalk boards line the walls, erasers have been pounded free of chalky ghost of words long since swiped away, and there is quiet. There is no sound to be heard in the tiny school room. It is a time for reflection. It is a time to think of the lessons learned, no matter if the lessons were to be learned in arithmetic or history or life lessons learned the hard way. There is quiet, for now. But in the quiet I hear a clock ticking…. Counting the seconds, minutes, hours… counting the time I have left in this world. The school room itself is not the key to learning… Time spent in the school room is becoming scarce… the time is running out.

Another fragment of light comes to me and in it I see my closest friends. This fragment is the hardest to look into…. I see their smiling, happy faces illuminated and glowing under the reflected light. They're so happy and warm. They're drinking and eating and laughing together… but without me. I try to call out to them, but I have no voice. I am forgotten because there is no more time.

Without time, there is no passion. Perhaps that is why my passions are not illuminated by a single beam of light. Perhaps that is why I see a reflection of that light rather than the light itself. I cannot see my true passion because it is broken. I cannot see the prism itself because the light blinds my eyes. Maybe I am a ghost. I am an unseeing, unheard, unwanted... Ghost of myself..