Keeping My Promises

I am up trying to figure out what is causing a stabbing sort of pain in the lower right portion of my abdomen. I hope it is just muscle pain where they sewed me all back together. I keep pushing around the new scar to see if I can pinpoint it or feel any knots but I can’t. Odd. I just could not get comfortable enough to sleep.

I know that I have had a one track mind for the last several months. It isn’t that I don’t think or care about anything outside of my two foot radius. I just couldn’t focus on much of anything except my physical and mental problems. There are other things that have been on my mind for a long time and recently I have been doing a lot of reading and learning.

I am sure that I have mentioned before that a majority of what we eat and use here in Casa Monkey is organically produced. I have also mentioned that I was working toward the goal of replacing all of my cosmetics, personal care items, and household products with less toxic more environmentally friendly versions. This is something that we as a family have deemed important to us and to the rest of the Earth and we are willing to pay the price for.

There are people in our own families that don’t understand why we do things this way. We weren’t brought up in organic homes or to think about the impact of our consumerism on a global level. This has all come about because the more I learn the more I realize that I can’t sit around on my fat ass in my old age wondering why everyone in my family has one disease or another when I knew I was feeding my children pesticide and GMOs and bovine growth hormone and all of the other yummy stuff in conventional foods that have been linked to tons of medical problems. We are also all pretty stupid to believe that the damage we are doing will allow for any of us to actually be sitting around at all in our old age.

I know that some people couldn’t make it a month in our house because of these choices. Strangely, I find it both comical and sad. I have no desire to condemn people for the way they choose to live. It isn’t for me to decide. I would be a hypocrite to say that I followed my own rules 100% of the time. I don’t. I am the first to admit to Jonesing for junk food. I pig out on crappy toxic food everytime it is near me. Usually, I pay for it by feeling like a complete slug as does Monkeyboy. We don’t sit around like other people and wonder why the hell our bellies hurt. We know why. We were overcome by our stupidity. We just lay around and moan for awhile and then move on and try not to be idiots so much in the near future. When I go to the grocery store I buy about 98% organics. If we want junk that bad, we have to make a special trip somewhere to get it.

However, in general, If people stopped and thought about what they put into their bodies and on their bodies and in their homes and educated themselves about the ingredients in the things they buy and the impact that those things have on their own health and their environments they would be freaking out. Just like I do. I suspect at least some people would change the way they think, the way they eat, the way they purchase and consume, and the way they live. I am not a pro at it yet but I am trying.

Changing your entire way of life over night is irrational. It is extreme and most of us aren’t comfortable with quitting anything “cold turkey”. Even as extreme as I prefer to do these things, I won’t give up my Jaguar just yet even though I know that running that big heavy thing up and down the street goes against everything I know is right. And my leather boot buying isn’t doing much for the aspiring Vegan in me. However, there are things I can and will change about my life the more I educate myself about the products I buy and the more I really weigh the pros and cons of the choices I make.

There have been a lot of people in and out of our home lately who just smile shake their heads at me and wonder why I am so crazy. It is hard for me to explain things to them without going into great detail and then coming up with all of the facts and reports to support my ranting. I keep trying to think of a subtle way to get people to appreciate or at least understand why they won’t find the stuff they normally buy at my house. It isn’t that I am trying to be difficult. Prepare yourself, I am about to give an example.

This is just one of many reasons you won’t find any of these products in my medicine cabinets or make up bag. I have completely restocked my home with healthier alternatives to these types of things.

In fact, across the board I have made lots of changes, everything from the food we eat to the soap we wash our clothes with. I have been in the process of changing these things for nearly two years. It gets easier the more I know about what it is I am buying and where to find things.

Now it would be completely retarded of me not to point out that the tubes shoved down my nose and into my abdomen and into my veins, not to mention the IV bags full of fluid that hung over my head for the last year, and who knows what else I had going into me in the hospital most likely contained these very harmful chemicals I have linked to. Does that make me feel better about the whole thing? Uh, no. Would it make me refuse medical treatment? Not likely. Does it piss me off that I have no real choice in the matter? Yes. No one bothered to tell me that these plastic things shoved into my body more than likely contain the aforementioned chemicals and who knows what else. I found this information all on my own. It is crazy. How do these things get approved?

There has to be some sort of education about these things and many other issues. People who find these things need to talk about them. How can we expect things to change for the better if we don’t do something about them? Changing the way you look at the things right there around you, right in your own home, seems pretty easy. More of the population should try it.

It seems like hippie tree hugging activism to be saving up my pennies to buy the organic hemp shower curtain I want that costs nearly a hundred dollars when could just go buy some polyester one with a toxic plastic liner at KMart for ten. I know. However, do your homework and you will understand what I am talking about. It is cheap to produce toxic crap. Anything worth having takes time and care and organic products are some of those things. There are a whole host of reasons why and I will most likely rant about that another time.

My view is that you can’t change anything in the world around you if you don’t start with yourself. This is why I don’t have I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter and Diet Mt. Dew.

Posted by gwendolyn on March 18, 2003 at 01:53 AM