Missing Teeth and Eating Roadkill

Long story short, I had a tooth pulled. It was terrible. It was awful, the most painful thing I’ve experienced to date.

And longer story short, I hit a rabbit with my car and ate it. It was delicious.

Since moving back to Wisconsin, there have been a lot of experiences that really have pushed me to test my values. Do I actually want to live this lifestyle? I’m not going to lie to you. These two events really really provoked some reflection. I felt (and suppose I still feel) shame. Shame for being scrappy. Shame for doing poor people things. Eating roadkill. Missing teeth.

Growing up, my family really did not have a lot of money. We’d be out in public smelling very strongly of our wood burning stove. We wore our clothes until they were outgrown or falling apart. I had crooked teeth. And I grew up wearing my brothers hand-me-downs. Imagine a me, the cutiest lil pie wearing a matching batman set to school. There’s actually quite a bit of hurt and shame to unpack, growing up in poverty like that. For so long, I felt so ashamed to not have money. To be perceived as poor, as inferior, as uncultured.

And so now, for me to purposefully be realigning my values. Realigning my spending and saving patterns. Heading back to thrift stores (enthusiastically so), opting for the less glamorous (but more economical) options, eating roadside berries and roadside critters, repairing clothing, sharing and repurposing resources. I feel less shame and more pride.

There is so much pride in what I am doing now. I feel so proud to have more time to myself and to my land and to my dog and hobbies. I feel so proud to find clothes and tools and decorations secondhand. To give them new life and redirect them away from the landfill. I’m honored to wear the same sweater until holes and stains make them suitable for nothing more than household rags. I’m proud to see and feel my direct connection to the food and clothes and water I consume. I’m proud to have eaten dead food from the side of the road, processing meat with my own hands, and not let life go to waste. I’m proud to have skinned a deer, to have grown my food, to have made my own lotion, to have filled my own (secondhand) freezer. For all of the other thrifty and scrappy and poor people things I’ve been doing.

As more time goes by, the question answers itself. I do, actually, want to live this lifestyle.

Proudly so.