Pre-Fasting Worries

Yesterday I checked into the TrueNorth healing center in Santa Rosa, California. This is where I'll be water fasting under doctor supervision. It seems as if some of my family and friends have some sort of aversion to the "f" word. They keep asking me if I'm nervous about fasting (I think they're imagining me dying, imploding, or perhaps coming home with no hair).

While I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous at all, more than anything I'm excited. I can't wait to hopefully wake up one day on this journey and not have to worry about who I'm going to be eating breakfast around, or who might trigger me in general throughout the day. I can't wait to feel a bit of freedom from this grasp that, no matter how much meditation, clean eating, and other lifestyle changes I incorporate, seems to be growing stronger and stronger with time. I can't wait to be able to talk about my life with Misophonia in the past tense and hopefully tell people that there is hope, and that they too can heal. I can't wait to move on with the rest of my life, which has been on pause for the last eight months as I've been seriously looking for a cure. I just can't wait to get started.

Last night I stayed with my sister and her friends, as they are a lot closer to the clinic than my home town. We had a large dinner and, given I have so many triggers at this point, it was impossible to not be triggered despite some of my sister's friends knowing about my condition. It's so frustrating struggling to be myself at a dinner table because it's like I'm in a constant battle with my mind. Small triggers here and there, I tell my brain it's okay, they don't mean it, they're good people and they care about me. Meanwhile, it feels like my brain's trying so hard to remain frustrated, and disgusted. Because I feel like this on a day to day basis, my hope and desire to heal easily masks any nerves I might have for abstaining from food.

One thing I'm nervous about is that the doctors who run TrueNorth are staunch Vegans. For about two years, off and on I tried eating mostly plant-based to fix my mental health. Lots of black beans, lots of broccoli, and so many onions I almost legally had to change my name to Shrek.

Sweet potatoes, carrots, apples, bananas, all of the good stuff. There are so many wonderful and tasty plants out there, and throughout my experience eating a mostly plant-based diet, it was great exploring different varieties. However, after a brief honeymoon phase eating much less meat, I failed to come back to feeling great. I continued to blame my body and my genetics for why I continued to feel worse and worse. "I need to detox more," I'd tell myself, or "the apple I had yesterday must not have been organic." I started nit-picking every aspect of my diet to the point that eating became another significant stressor in my life.

Around two weeks ago, I had a conversation with my dad where he explained to me that my great, and great great grandparents, as well as older generations, were all dairy farmers that lived well into their 90s. I then thought about the time in my life when I was happiest and healthiest overall. This happened to be when I was consuming dairy. Not necessarily tons of dairy, just protein shakes after I would exercise and some cheese on sandwiches here and there.

For some reason, when I first began researching nutrition and how to heal, dairy was one of the first foods I cut out. I didn't even think twice about it. Logically it made sense to me at the time that cows produce milk for their calves, not for humans. I also read about many people that had healed their skin conditions and more by cutting out dairy. I never thought, maybe it's something else, besides the dairy, that's causing my problems.

Sitting here now thinking back to when I gave up dairy, one of the biggest lessons I've learned so far is not to assume something is right or going to work for you because it did for someone else. We're all different and have unique upbringings, ancestries, and lifestyle factors that have shaped who we are today. We each require a different key to unlock our health and full potential. For me, I know my key is a blend of proper nutrition and gut repair, self-love and affirmations, and support from my friends and family.

After I came to the realization two weeks ago that my giving up of dairy didn't make the most sense, I decided to head to the grocery store to do something wild. I was going to buy some milk for the first time in over two years. After consuming a glass or two, I started to feel good. Not insanely good like I was drinking some life tonic, just good. After two or three days, my brain fog felt better, and I felt a little bit more confident.

I continued drinking milk up until two days ago (a few days before I'm supposed to start my supervised fast, as the clinic encourages you to avoid animal products before your arrival so your transition into fasting is less difficult), and continued to feel better, I still had a few days where I didn't feel great, and my triggers were strong, but I also felt like my brain was being nourished for the first time in years. I could feel the back of my head tingling as if it was healing from years of neglect.

So here I am, sitting here thinking I've done everything you can do in the plant-based world, and it's not for me. Yet, I'm about to attend a fasting clinic run by Vegan doctors. What if after fasting, my body is craving some form of animal products? Will the clinic understand? Or will I have to break out like Harold & Kumar? Fortunately, the doctors are supposedly very open to questions, and I'm curious to see if they'll be able to address all of my concerns with plant-based eating or if they agree that it's for some, but not all.

Either way, I'll have some answers over the next week or two.

On a non-fasting related note, yesterday after checking into the clinic I was free to explore. So I drove around Santa Rosa, Sonoma, and surrounding towns. The land was so bucolic, a combination of vineyards and massive Redwoods split by a winding river. As I was driving through I felt like I had reached the surface after being held underwater for so long. It was like I could fully breathe again and wanted to soak in the land and the air as much as possible. No consistent honking, no billboards, no bright lights, just peace and quiet as far as you could see.

Once I reached a bend where I could park, I pulled over and walked down to the river. There were people floating by in inner tubes, others jumping off rocks, and some laying on the "beach." I wondered if any of the people around me had any chronic health problems they were struggling with. I thought about another lesson I've learned so far on my journey. Everywhere you look in life whether it's on Instagram or right in front of you, you usually see people that look happy or at least act happy. It's easy to fall into a thought cycle of thinking everyone else is fine and you're alone in your struggle. This is not the case at all, everyone has ups and downs in life, and will go through periods of intense trial, it's just a matter of when. Some people struggle early, but most people, at least it seems to me, struggle later. The beauty of experiencing tough times is that your appreciation for life itself and all of the little things increases. When I have a good day these days, I feel happier than I ever did as a little kid. It's like a thousand-pound weighted blanket has been lifted from my body, and the skies have cleared. I'm so grateful for this tough experience because I now appreciate everything in life so much more. Each breath I take, each day I wake up, nothing is more important than your health, and the health of those closest to you.

After I left the beach I drove to Armstrong National Park where I saw some of the biggest trees I've ever seen. From outside the park, it was a sunny, relatively warm day, with minimal clouds in the sky. Upon entering, the massive Redwoods eclipsed the sun, and it felt like a different world. It reminded me of the Hunger Games, when Katniss is roaming through the woods. I hadn't experienced a setting so quiet in years, it was as if the trees blocked out light and sound. As I walked around, I was alone with my thoughts and looked around feeling so grateful. Grateful for the nature around me, grateful for the food and water I have in my life, and grateful for this healing journey I'm on, that's already taught me many lessons, and will probably show me many more.

I laid down on a bench made out of a fallen Redwood and looked up through the trees to a small circle of blue sky. I started to meditate but felt self-conscious about meditating when I heard a group of people walking my way. This is something I'm still working on, my insecurities and self-confidence. I was afraid the people walking towards me would think I was weird for meditating. Afterward, I reminded myself that meditating is something that's been practiced for thousands of years. It's normal and beneficial, and instead of accepting those facts, I for some reason decided to create a fake dialogue in my head that if these people I don't even know saw me meditating, they would think I'm weird. While it's hard to tell yourself not to think these kinds of thoughts, I've found it easy to note them, and journal about them, and slowly over the past two months, I've noticed them decreasing. I'm not sure why they flared up yesterday, perhaps because I was in a new environment, far away from home, or perhaps it was because I ate gluten earlier that day. Either way, I'm going to keep journaling about my thoughts and realizations and see what other conclusions I come to while fasting.