Feeling Dirty

I tried to go vegetarian in my youth and one of the reasons I did so is because I had been molested and raped as a child, so all things about my body got run through some internal filter and came up registering in my mind as "never good enough, never pure enough, some kind of sin." I suspect I'm not the only person whose reasons for wanting to be vegetarian were influenced by some kind of personal baggage driving them to want to go to extremes to "purify" themselves or "prove" something about their morality or some such.

That's a piece I wrote after writing about Eating Cleaner. I think victims of sexual assault feel "dirty" and get labeled as "dirty" because sexual assault typically leaves you infected with something. 

I was molested as a child and I've been extremely open about that since age 16 or 17. That openness has attracted other survivors of assault wanting someone to talk with who can actually be helpful and a they tend to have serious health issues and sometimes I know those problems can be traced to the assault. 

I was molested untol age 13.5. I was 14 when I began trying to clean up my diet and began trying to go vegetarian, something I never really pulled off, though I've eaten semi vegetarian for a lot of years.

I'm an environmental studies major. Pesticides and other poisonous substances concentrate in fat stores and the further up the food chain you go, the more exposure you are likely to get to harmful substances. 

So if you know NOTHING about nutrition etc. etc. the quick and dirty way to eat cleaner is to eat less meat and dairy and go vegetarian.  I think this is probably part of what is driving the nutty political movement of veganism.

A lot of those people are probably victims of sexual assault and, like me at one time, feel very judgy about anything and everything having to do with their body and feel compelled to go to extremes to try to address it.

I don't think that's completely crazy actually. I think it is possible to "purify" the body and get rid of the chronic infections and mystery health problems rooted in them that sexual assault seems to leave behind. 

My mother always told me the shame is on the rapist, not the victim. In a perfect world, we would at a minimum help victims recover from the legacy of health issues sexual assault typically leaves behind.

If you "feel dirty," I will suggest addressing that legacy of health issues will probably help.

Aside from that, try to be ethical. It sucks to be victimized but reasonable people should judge you for how you comfortable yourself and the choices you make, not what others did to you which still burdens your life.

Do that for YOUR sanity. 

There will always be injustice in the world and even good people routinely have bad things happen to them. But I have a clear conscience and that's valuable to ME, no matter how shittily other people unjustly treat me.

I'm not recommending it to add to your burdens. I'm recommending it as a survivor who is at peace with myself though I very much dislike the state of the world.