Interlude: Reflections on 5 Years of Veganism

 I need to hit pause and think about some positive things. I am in a profoundly dark place. But sometimes it helps to find something good to think about. This post sits in that pause.

Some people have a "veganniversary" to celebrate. They know the day they became vegan. I don't know the day, for me, because it was a process with frustrations, false starts, tears, and panic attacks in grocery stores. But I know that it was the fall of 2016, and I know it took me a little while to tell you about this. So long that I just fell off the face of the earth so far as this blog was concerned until the spring of 2017!

If you're new here, you might not know that Food for Dissertating wasn't always vegan. I was drawn into food blogging for many of the same reasons that compel me now, though I have more reasons than I used to have.

Many vegans say that veganism isn't a diet. Instead, I might say it isn't just a diet, bearing in mind that by "diet" I just mean "what we eat," not "what we eat when we want to lose weight," which somehow became the default meaning. My early meals after I committed to veganism weren't "vegan"--I was still getting through some non-vegan stuff in my kitchen, since wasting things helped nobody--but I was. I had transformed and was still transforming. I quietly stopped buying animal products. I went on a blogging hiatus while I figured out what to say (I ultimately came out as vegan here in the spring of 2017). I had an unprovoked showdown with an old man who was the father of a friend of mine on Thanksgiving in 2016, because he was inexplicably enraged that I did not put whipped cream on my slice of the vegan pecan pie I'd made and brought over. I was getting to know myself again, and I confronted myself three times each day (if not more), every day, as I made new and unfamiliar choices, choices quite different from those made by anyone I knew. Co-workers made a lot of comments in the break room. Friends began to ask those stereotypical questions about whether I'd eat meat on a desert island if there wasn't anything else. I found food kind of fraught at that time. I was learning how to cook and getting to know myself again, as a different sort of person.

So here, I put a pin down, in spite of having no specific veganniversary. I have been vegan for five years. I have eaten my way through thousands of vegan meals, a lot of delicious ones and some terrible ones. I've been through a lot of unexpected challenges, too, like a life-altering diagnosis and several other traumas, some experienced by all of you (like a global pandemic), some by people in my region (like a flood), and some just by myself (like the hit-and-run accident with a bus that was driving on the wrong side of the road when it hit my car). I have found a kind of soothing constant in the food I eat and the community I share that with. 

Going vegan was scary. Staying vegan, though, is paradoxically a joy. I really like being vegan (and 2016 me would probably find that surprising). I love the adventure of the food I eat, how much I've learned about how to take care of myself, and also, how I can uphold my ethics and stay true to myself in the most mundane of ways. I often say I pack the lunches I pack as a present to myself to help me through my midday slump, and that's true. But there's more to it than it just being pretty. The food I eat is a reminder of the choices I can make in the face of all this chaos, the good things in my control when so many bad things aren't. Multiple times a day, I renew a commitment to myself just by having a meal. I remind myself that I have done a thing I believe is a good thing to have done, and that I have avoided doing something else. I know many vegans come across as sanctimonious, and I hope my saying that doesn't come across that way. Heaven knows I didn't always eat this way, and I still have ways I need to improve myself. I'm not saying I'm better than other people. But this--the food I choose--is one of the things that makes me feel the best about my own impact on the world. It was a thing I could do. And I did it, and I'm doing it, and that gives me mastery over the monsters lurking in the shadows, in a way.

On the morning I took the photo you see in this post, I was having the kind of meal I don't necessarily post here, because I have similar things so often: Some sliced banana (the rest of said banana got put into my lunch box, or else I would have had more at breakfast); JUST Egg scrambled with onions, asparagus, and mushrooms; some vegan link sausages; an English muffin split between its buttered (margarined!) half and its half with strawberry jam; and orange juice. It was breakfast on a day I hadn't slept well and had had nightmares and I needed some special care. Although I was still tired that day, it really helped. Lunch isn't the only present I give to myself. I get up early enough--yes, even if I haven't slept so well--to make sure I've eaten something that will see me through my morning. That wasn't a priority until it absolutely had to be. Autoimmune disorders have a way of demanding conformity with their dictates, after all. But with respect to that I'm kind of grateful, in some strange way, that it forced this on me, because it does so much more than help me stave off symptoms throughout the day. It soothes my soul.

So here's to five years behind me, and a lifetime ahead, filled with the joy of discovery, the hope that comes from beating back despair with little actions within one's control, and being kind to myself when I can.