Cleaning House, Cleaning Myself: Starting Over After Survival

It's been almost a year since I last posted anything. Why?

I think, at some point, I realized that the more my healing progressed, the less I wanted it to define my life. Constantly talking and writing about it would only keep it alive, when all I really want is to keep moving forward.

Interestingly, though, my focus has shifted from emotional healing to physical healing.

Cleaning Out My Old Life

After my first week back in my old, yet new home, I decided it was time for a complete cleanse - inside and out.

I carefully went through everything I had put into storage over the past few years, sorting what I still wanted to keep from what no longer belonged in my life. With every single item - a piece of clothing, a plate, a book - I asked myself: Do I still want this in my life, or does it belong to my old life and deserve to be let go?

Letting go of that old baggage felt incredibly freeing. I dropped off several boxes of donations. In Berlin, there are a number of places where you can do that, such as Berliner Engel, where both food and household items find a new home with people who truly need them.

When Healthy Wasn't Healthy

Next came my inner cleanse.

During my time with Lucas, I was responsible for all the cooking. We had a fairly traditional division of roles: I cooked, did the grocery shopping, and made sure we had something that resembled a home. He focused on work.

The problem was that he expected exactly that from me and became angry whenever I didn't meet his expectations. At the same time, his work wasn't generating any income. When money became tight, somehow that was my fault too. Yet I was constantly told that I wasn't doing anything and that the entire weight of our future rested on his shoulders.

I cooked three meals a day - breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I prepared snacks and brought him tea and coffee.

"Ever since I met you, all I've known is hunger," he would say over and over again.

Only much later did I realize that this accusation wasn't really about me. It was something he had carried from his relationship with his mother, and I had simply become the stand-in.

During that time, I discovered Dr. Michael Greger's How Not to Die and Dr. Alejandro Junger's Clean. Both advocate a whole-food, plant-based diet as the healthiest way to eat. To our surprise, the recipes were genuinely delicious.

Greger's recipes, however, rely heavily on a food processor, which isn't exactly practical when you're constantly on the move—as we were. Junger's recipes were much easier to incorporate into our lifestyle because they required less equipment and preparation.

There were exceptions, though.

Whenever Lucas was struggling emotionally, we'd end up at McDonald's or order pizza. And over Christmas, our diet consisted almost entirely of sugar and dairy.

Juices, Microbiom and DNA Surprises

Overall, I believed I was living a healthier lifestyle than most people - until, during my cleansing phase, I decided to take a microbiome test.

The results came as a complete surprise.

Throughout my time with Lucas, I had eaten a mostly plant-based diet. Yet the report came back with twelve pages of negative findings. According to the analysis, my gut was severely out of balance: histamine intolerance, leaky gut syndrome, and barely any beneficial bacteria. I was shocked. A doctor friend of mine even said that my microbiome was in such poor condition that rebuilding it would be difficult without a fecal microbiota transplant.

Although I was eating an entirely plant-based diet, I realized that I had been cooking many of the foods highest in histamine—tomatoes, spinach, mushrooms, and eggplant. Believing I was doing something good for myself, I had unknowingly put even more strain on a body that was already weakened by the emotional stress I had been living under.

That was the moment I realized that no popular way of eating - whether plant-based, keto, or paleo - is automatically healthy. None of them truly work if you don't understand your own body, and especially your microbiome.

It made me realize that before choosing any particular diet, we should first get to know our own biology. Ideally, that means testing your microbiome - and, as I would later discover, even your DNA - to find the way of eating that is actually right for you.

Looking back, it also explained why my constant headaches, persistent fatigue, and heavy mood - symptoms I had always attributed to the relationship - had been made even worse by the very diet I believed was helping me.

So I had to make a radical change. Not only from living in a symbiotic relationship to living on my own, but also from what I believed was healthy to what was actually right for my body.

I loved cooking for him and was excited to try countless new recipes. It became my refuge - the one moment I could be alone with myself in silence. The only moment when I felt I had any control.

After the breakup, that joy disappeared.

Instead, I decided on a complete cleanse: three weeks of juice fasting. No solid food, only fresh juices made from roughly three parts vegetables to two parts fruit.

The first week went surprisingly well. Every morning, I prepared my bottles for the day. Hardly any dishes. No planning meals. No wondering what to cook. I felt light.

By the second week, the hunger kicked in. Or maybe it was more of an appetite. I love food, and living on nothing but juice quickly went from feeling liberating to feeling boring. I found comfort in flipping through cookbooks, making a list of everything I wanted to cook once I was allowed to join the world of people who actually ate again.

It wasn't until much later, through a DNA test, that I discovered fasting isn't particularly well suited to my body. I hardly ever experience a strong feeling of fullness, and fasting only amplifies that. It also increases my histamine burden, while consuming isolated fructose without protein can even encourage fat storage.

That was my second wake-up call.

Learning Who I Am Again

To truly understand yourself and what your body needs - you have to go back to the source.

For two years, I had barely felt myself at all. I was told I didn't have my own opinions. Where we went, what we watched, what we ate, was all decided for me.

Now I find myself asking:

Who am I without him - the man who had become both my anchor and my compass?

Even if it means pushing myself to my limits - even diving into my own DNA to better understand myself - I want to strip away everything I no longer need.

A complete reset.

A blank page.

For a new version of myself.

Be well,

Vaselisa