Food is Weird

by Joshua Quirk

So it’s 2010, I’m 18 years old, and I’ve left home to live states away with my internet girlfriend. As you know, these types of stories don’t often end so well.

Fast forward two years. I’m drowning in a toxic relationship with no room to breathe. I experienced my needs being crushed by the interminable pressure of a partner who just wasn’t right for me. The stress led to me giving up my own morals, beliefs, loves, and truly my identity to the situation. I was so deep in it that I couldn’t see the light any more.

My health rapidly plummeted. The diet that we shared didn’t help that; multiple trips to fast food establishments a week, and we felt absolutely deprived if we didn’t eat out at a sit-in restaurant at least once a week. I’d guzzle sugary coffees just to stay awake, and this magic potion that I once lauded so highly now caused me anxiety, and whole-body pain.

I spent years struggling through this. Every week I would find something new to blame my newfound painful existence on: It was brain lesions. It was cancer. It was zinc. It was gluten. It was milk. It was fibromyalgia. It was chocolate. It was my DNA. It was H. pylori infesting my gut. It was every single thing that spilled out of my web browser’s search results and straight into my screaming amygdala.

Truthfully… it took a while to figure out what it really was. But it wasn’t comparing my own condition to others that helped me as much as turning inwards.

It was a lack of spirit.

Eight years later, in 2018 I did something truly bizarre. Led by spirit, that fellow who I’d recently begun to listen to again, I began to eat an entirely meat diet. In that half-year, I consumed more steak, salmon, bacon, and eggs than an average American may eat in half a decade. Nothing else but water.

It was an elimination diet. The purpose was to determine what was causing my illness. By listening to my body. I did find the answers, and I was slowly able to re-integrate other foods.

Bear in mind this whole time my soul was very, *very* consistently keeping me informed of the immense pain that I was inflicting with this diet. I’d write long posts to friends about my struggle with this cognitive dissonance. But it did work, and bizarrely it was what felt right for the time being.

I realized that if I wanted to avoid the obviously forthcoming multiple lives spent living as enslaved cows next to slaughterhouses that I would have to determine a way to heal, so that I could return to a more balanced diet. One that healed not only my body, but also my soul.

Starting by re-introducing broccoli, and then moving to other plants, I began to transition first to a balanced diet that worked for my body, and then, eventually, to a completely vegan diet.

As I healed my body, and as I healed my soul, I also healed my relationship with my partner. And as that rift healed, as the toxicity coagulated and then dissolved, we realized that it was all that was holding us together. Without our toxic habits, we had nothing to talk about. Nothing to do together. We were suddenly strangers.

It was in 2010 that I began this path to learn this lesson. In 2022 I am healed.