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photo credit mondopanno@flickr
Wow. It's been a while since my last post. Things have been a little crazy. I've had so many kind people still follow me and my non-existent blog (thank you) and so here's the latest update, as much as I can cover 5 missing months.
The good news is that I've maintained some very good raw food habits and I love it. I still do a gigantic carafe of fresh squeezed OJ every morning. I have never wanted solid food for breakfast and, in fact, hate breakfast foods so this has stayed with me since I started doing it way back around week 32 or so. I'm also still pretty addicted to my lemons. For about a decade I'd juice a lemon, add it to some filtered water and sweeten it with some orange or lemon stevia and start my day that way. It's very cleansing and refreshing. I still do that, read my email and then do the orange thing. Awesome.
About the end of May, however, my mother was found lying on the floor of her apartment, she and the apartment in a tremendous state of disarray. The ambulance arrived shortly before me and I tried to talk to her while she was lying on the floor. Very out of it, looking very death like. This was the 2nd time in my life when I saw her and felt she wasn't going to make it. Fortunately, I'm not good at predicting death.
She was hospitalized for e-coli but during this time I felt it wasn't in anyone's interests - hers or mine - to return to her apartment. She has significant memory loss and I was a constant wreck worrying about her as she ambled about unwittingly day in and out. My niece and I finally decided that living with her, in another state, would be better for my mother, and for me as well.
She left on June 10 after more work than I could have ever imagined sorting out and moving her out of her apartment. Oddly, I graduated high school and was married all on June 10th's. It was what seemed a cold, grey cloudy day despite being mid-June. Was it due to my state of mind? I don't know. That's my memory of it.
Several difficult days led up to her leaving. They included a very odd series of photos of my mother and I where it looks like she's forcing a smile, but it's clearly a frown, and trying her darnedest to get away from me. It hurt me a lot since I'd cared for her for many years. There was much lying and hiding of the truth on her part and it hurt me a lot. The last photos of us were the last straw.
After I said my good-byes at the nursing facility and they were ready to drive away, my niece asked me what I was going to do since I had 3 hours before I had to be present and accounted for in my life. I told her I had planned to go to breakfast (where they have fresh squeezed OJ!). The unspoken reason was so I could collect myself after bidding farewell to my mother.
Well, they decided to join me so my niece, her husband and my mother all accompanied me to breakfast. Which means, I got to/had to say goodbye again. Kill me. I mean, you know, it was 'worth it' I suppose I have to say that - worth it to be with my niece and her husband but I felt like my insides were being ripped out through my skin. Then I had to go onto do things in the day with other human beings who could give a rip with no space between. It was enough to take the enamel off your teeth. The whole shebang was, it was all so horrible.
In the weeks following her departure I went through some stuff, but ironically and this is the God's truth: I lost the enamel off the front of my teeth. Swear to God! Choose your words carefully and more on that later, but there had been tons of alluding to me not being their/her child my whole life and I never looked like anyone in my family - for which I am grateful and those who know understand what I'm talking about - but it was gnawing at me.
So in August I decided since she was (and is) still living that I'd have a DNA test done on us. I needed to know once and for all. The results shocked me more than I ever thought they possibly could have: I am her daughter.
So, why would a mother spend 47 years alluding to and then covering up the fact that she was/wasn't my mother and why would my sisters allude to and then cover up the fact I was/wasn't all these years? The only other explanation was that my father isn't really my father but you know what? I no longer care. Any man who might otherwise be my real father probably isn't around/available to me like all men in my life aren't so forget it. Whatever. I just don't need the drama anymore.
Or, so I thought. I spent the next month processing all that. Then I learned one of my sisters (I have two...) was on the brink of being homeless, which didn't surprise me as she was headed that way regardless of any help my family or her children gave her. A total lost cause, former drug addict who gave up the drugs but none of the behavior. She's as crazy as they come and has destroyed every connection she ever had to anyone, including her kids and myself.
Then for some strange reason on Sept 21 I Googled my eldest sisters name. I've not seen nor heard from her since 2002. No one has. She was last seen driving away from my mother's house after my father died, having stolen as much property as she could fit into her little car. Unbelievable. I Googled her and what I found blew me out of my chair. I openly exclaimed, "OH MY GOD!"
There she was - a fairly current photo - aged and bent over a small child, looking very predatory in the midst of a food bank no less.
I never dreamed there would be a full on color photo. I sat there feeling like I'd been hit across the face with a baseball bat. I could feel the lies and manipulation come through my monitor. She's a very scary, unpredictable person. My eldest sister would make my middle sister look like Mother Teresa, and just seeing the picture struck fear in my heart. I had to click off of the photo because it was that disturbing.
But out of all that evil something unthinkable happened. I realized I no longer live that life with those people. I am no longer subject to the insanity, the alcoholism, and the drama, and that I live a very different and peaceful life.
It was cathartic - all three episodes. I finally felt like my own grown up person. I no longer felt shackled by all that insanity.
So, in some sick way the past 5 months were more about inward work than food or diet. I suffered some weight gain and bloating throughout it but I'm hoping to spend the next three months reclaiming myself, and I hope to blog a little more regularly about it.
When I can post a photo showing progress of where I left off at the end of February, I will.
It may (and most likely will) take me more than the 'recommended year's time' to convert fully to raw vegan but I do agree that it's a process that takes time. I also still feel very passionate about this way of eating, unlike anything I've done before. I've made some good strides in many areas and made habits out of things like orange juice, lemons, salads. I discovered a system that replaced all of the lost enamel on my teeth. Yep, I did. Things are good again all around and OH my gosh - my next posting will be about my greatest food conquest yet.
Just wait...it's huge. You'll see. Thanks for having me back. Stay tuned :D
