when i first moved out and started cooking for myself i had a very poor diet. i think @lizardho has a picture of my fridge at one point, it was just various kinds of pickled things, and cured meats.

fast forward after like, three or four months of this, and i was at the dentist, getting my teeth cleaned, when the hygenist went ah, babs, your gums are bleeding. u need to floss more.

and i went i floss like, three times a day, and it always bleeds, and im always gentle, and you are lying bastard gum torturers. u can do what u need to, but dont stab my mouth and blame me when it bleeds.

the hygenist took exception to that. we didn’t really shout at each other, but it was a tense exchange and i was just much more crabby than normal. eventually he left to get the dentist to sort things out.

cue the dentist coming back. he checked out my gums, gave me a lookover, then said hey. babs. are your joints kind of achey?

and i went yeah, i’m kind of hoping for another growth spurt, i’m 5'11 and it would be nice to finally hit the ol’ 6’

and he went yeah, but you’re 21, so that’s not gonna happen. got any rashes? weird bruises?

and i had some decent bruises, and a weird rash on my leg, and he looked at them and we yeah you are quite vitamin c deficient. thats not easy to do in arizona. how much fresh fruit or vegetables have you had in your diet recently?

and i went does pickled count?

and that was his lightbulb moment. apparently pickling breaks down the vitamin c in things really well. he told me that i should just like, eat one or two raw bell peppers a day for a week and call him if that worked.

it did. my gums stopped bleeding, and my knees stopped hurting at night and my skin just felt smoother and nicer and i got a lot less crabby. no more mouthing off at dental hygenists.

i called him when the week was done, and i was embarrassed that i’d given myself scurvy like it was still the 18th century, and he said naw, not scurvy, but like. noticable deficiency. he said that it was a weird problem, but he’d run into it before - mostly with college students fresh out of the house. people trying to live off peanut butter and ramen for a few months at a time.

i took a multivitamin after that, but i also made an effort to try and eat like a normal human being. i failed occasionally but the effort made me feel a lot better.

my time in cross country gave me this sort of gnostic-feeling about my body. like it was a weak thing that i needed to overcome through will, and not like. me. at least not actually me. i think this was my first big wake up call that no, the body is not my enemy, i am my body, i am a physical object in this world, and if i don’t take care of myself i am going to be worse at everything, including moral tasks, like not being a dick to the dental hygenist.

so. yeah. tldr, please don’t spend months trying to live off pickles and salami. :/