How Going Vegan Helped my Relationship with My SuperMan

(This post discusses adult topics and uses adult words written in an Australian vernacular.)

I’ve spent 13 years, 14 this September, practicing the only known treatment for inhalant allergies to chemicals: avoidance behaviour. Due to digestion issues related to food intolerance that hit in 2002-3, at the age of 33 after years of normal chemical use, although I did love the smell of all of my female consumer-based beauty-care-products fiercely. I was wild, free and adored my collection of fragrances, red wine, drugs, cigarettes nail polish… ; yet, I spent the next decade needing to, after being advised by the one and only Australian renowned and respected Allergist and Immunologist, Dr Colin Little, here in Victoria, Australia,  to not waste money on quacks (my words) to practice chemical avoidance—wearing a 3M mask worked excellently for around 10 years or so of this ‘condition’ I have. My life changed immensely. I thrived at it. I recovered in 09′. Why did I leave the farm house? I need to blog about that.  Since 2012 though, after living in a water damaged building (WDB), I developed food intolerances that didn’t stop until, basically, all I was eating was fruit and veggies—yet still I was losing foods. I mean who reacts to bananas? Really? To paraphrase my doctor: Bananas are a food like any other! WTF!

Bananas

So I switched to another high-carb food that gives rocking energy—if not cooked in oil [speaking to you Slobodan!] (Note to peeps who are not chronically ill: Please don’t tell sick people they look great just because they’ve lost some weight because they may be feeling like carnivore-shit on the inside (like dead corpses of other species coated to the inner intestine? Yeah? Got that picture?); and besides, life is not actually about being skinny but it’s bullshit if you don’t fit in your pants. Like, if you do want to lean out a little: Go Vegan. Or buy this cool t-shirt from The Anticarnist)

So there I was, sick as all fuck, sulking about being an accidental Vegan (I’d lost my milk chocolate Caramel Koalas, yeah? Those and hot glass of milk were my comfort food and I was not yet aware of the abundant and multitude of ways to whip up vegan treats. Food and cooking, not so much. That’s what boyfriends are for, I guess?) and, during the summer of 015′, there I was hanging out on YouTube: due to the need for human company, totally frustrated with FreeLee and her 10 banana smoothies capable of making me ill for the rest of the day (it’s not FreeLee’s fault, my body seems to think I need to release histamine to protect myself from bananas), or I am having a severe mould reaction to all bananas (I can only describe like a bad acid trip.) and  then only after being tortured with food testing, I came across this speech, titled, ‘The Greatest Speech You Will Ever Hear’ by Gary Yourofsky. Here is the video:

I saw this realising: accidental Veganism was/is not even about me: it’s about the planet, the animals and all of our health. Spiritually is lacking in my world. Becoming vegan has not cured my illness but it’s allowed me to eat food without getting ill. And I can shit; that’s important when you get to my age: 46.

My only problem with Vegansim was social: For now, I live an isolated life, and have a carer, I’m not able to cook, clean and, sometimes, even feed my own animals, and sometimes. I can’t lift heavy things so the man in my life, my best friend, Slobodan, does it all for me. I’m not good at being grateful for this, but worse:

I was left wondering, how can I have a close relationship with someone who wants to put a corpse in your frypan or oven when you yourself have woken up to the truth of animal cruelty?

My answer: I showed my man, Gary Yourofsky’s, ‘The Most Important Speech You Will Ever Hear‘ And before it even finished, he turned around and said to me: “Misha, I’m not doing this to the animals, anymore. I won’t do it; I can’t be a part of it!” This, coming from a 46-year-old man born and bread in a meat-eating Macedonian culture where family BBQ’s and meal times are passionate and full-on events. It kinda rocked my world. I find that hell sexy in man. You really have no idea how much different a vegan man is because he sees the world differently and doesn’t want to add to the pain; that’s special. And:

We are talking about traditional dishes nearly always containing animal-based products, and even more so, unless people are fasting for religious reasons, these dishes are plated up with piles of ‘chops’, pork, lamb, beef, seafood: all animal flesh sold as a with a bar code. He says:

A supermarket smells different. packaged flesh. It no longer normal in my world.

 (How can a pile plate full of lamb chops just go by the noun ‘lamb’? There’s maybe 7-8 baby sheep that were inhumanely slaughtered to get those ‘chops’ made from sliced corpses (that’s my imaginative guess). Just some food for thought there.). An old favourite of mine was meat stuffed into capsicums. Sausages hanging on the washing line. This was/is normal life for Slobodan to come home to. So when he sees animals in trucks or legal-animal torture on YouTube, he gets angry.

Going vegan has helped me cope with a Life Altering illness; it’s also helped with my only close relationship. I never thought I would get married due to so many complicated reasons but with veganism in common, it runs pretty deep: the connection, almost spiritual (after going raw when Slobodan first went vegan, it was spiritual and we shared that) the commitment, the caring for creatures who don’t have a voice to speak up for themselves: I find that compassion sexy in a man.

My ephipany: All people who have chemical sensitivity must do their utmost for the planet as their health depends upon it. And most people don’t give a fukc or even care about the planet. They are just as sucked into the consumerism marketed at them as fragrance heads–most, not all. They don’t give any fukcs for the animals tested on so that products are SAFE for consumers. LMFAO/ Safe for who? Burn shit into the atmosphere: Cigarettes and woodsmoke. *How shameful* Considering like 2.8% of people in just NSW alone have sensitivities to chemicals.

Anyway. This is my vegan mate Solomon.

He is my friend and professional therapist’s goat, Solomon, who had a rocky start to life but is funky fine and dandy now! I think there is a sister or something, I will update you at The Labyrinth with This.

@SlobodanVegan ????? Thank you #sexy #veganman Real men are kind to all animals, never eating them?? pic.twitter.com/iErS57EXgN

— Michellina van Loder (@michevanloder) March 17, 2016

PS: “If you are thinking about going vegan: do it for a month; if you don’t feel good after that, go back to eating shitty, greasy food made from animals’ flesh and byproducts… Go Raw for a week, then tell me how you feel.” ~ Vegan Revolution

with FreeLee and her 10 banana smoothies capable of making me ill for the rest of the day (it’s not FreeLee’s fault, my body seems to think I need to release histamine to protect myself from bananas)

Read More…

Veganism in The Labyrinth: Where is the Love?
Veganism in The Labyrinth: How To Explain Why You’re Vegan
Veganism in The Labyrinth: See the World Through Vegan Eyes
Veganism in The Labyrinth: My Vegan Story (Apologies for the 2334 words: This piece needs editing, still!, making it shorter: It was written stream of consciously then uploaded. Otherwise it wouldn’t have got up there)
Check out: Plant Based News
Vegan Revolution Podcasts
Twitter: SlobodanVegan (‘Slobodan’ in Macedonian means ‘Freedom’ (Also in Serbian or Croatian too, I believe). He has just made this video about what he takes in his lunchbox as a vegan man and will have [link here soon]

(Vegan Photo Attributions: PixaBay)
(Image of Solomon, the model goat, used with his full permission)