The year 2024 has been a year that with all new experiences. I started the year in a place where I wanted to take my activism to a new place. At the end of 2023, I decided to leave school. I also learned that my surgery was not going to happen on time. I was very down about both of these events happening so close together. In world news Is-not-real began a genocide against the Palestinian people. I connected with people that shared my view that genocide is bad. I began wearing Keffiyehs. I was at work one day and my boss said to me “would you like to join a phone bank calling our state reps to call for a ceasefire in Gaza”. I was very open to this, I had been looking for a way to increase my advocacy. I joined the group and began calling my 2 senators and my house representative daily. In the middle of March, the group invited non-muslims to further align with them by asking people to observe Ramadan in solidarity with them. I thought this is a good way for me to understand the cause that I am fighting for more. At first I thought that it was going to be hard to go 12-13 hours without eating, drinking, listening to music, and leaving negative thinking. I soon learned that when I don’t have the distractions of food, drink, and music - it is easier to change my thinking. I am typically easy to anger or go to that place of negative thinking. Removing the external distractions has made it easier to recenter and reclaim myself. This has allowed me to see why I might have been gone to those places. I have been able to change the thought. I can now feel those negative feelings starting, acknowledge them, and dismiss them. Not so much in a dismissive way, more like a way that says thank you for allowing me to see you, but I do not need you right now. Or I can thank them for being there and see what action I need to take, as I have become more aware of my need for the range of emotions that I can posses. In this current moment I am realizing that what I might have framed as a negative emotion, is really not negative. My negative emotions are a cue that I need to do something, go somewhere, or say something. I have also found that I am stronger than I ever realized. I used to think that my vulnerability made me weak. I have been working on embracing my vulnerability, but what I have learned is that I am stronger than the confines of my body. When I have felt hunger and wanted to give up, I have been able to dig deep and keep on. It is in those moments of wanting to give up, that I have found my strongest parts and pushed through. There have been times that I wanted to give up and break the fast, but seeing that I had progressed so far into the day I think, why give up now. I guess it is true the only way to get where you want to go is to keep going. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and there is a meal after the sunsets.

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                       After the sunsets, is supposed to be the darkest part of the day. I have come to learn that we are rewarded when we enter into darkness and are able to survive it. This thought has helped me to see that even when I might be in my darkest times, there is something beneficial. Right now, it is that I get to eat, but there is more to this story. I was recently watching a television program and the main character said “What happens to Froto and his friends when they get to the end of the journey? - perhaps the journey is what they are living to do” I can’t help but think I am living in these moments of the fight, but what happens when it is all said and done. What happens after Palestine is free? What happens after I arrive at the end of the journey toward surgery? I have spent the entirety of my life in the fight to survive. Will I be happy to metaphorically sit on the porch with some sweet tea?

 

                     Some interesting quotes and thoughts came to mind while I was pondering this thought of what it means to fast. It’s not until we are free from the distractions of the sounds of music or other distracting sounds that we can finally listen and hear ourselves, our goals and our intentions. This is an interesting thought. I get so caught up in the daily putting out the fire race to get it done, I sometimes forget the goal. I also think that I am so busy adapting to what is coming at me in the moment that I lose track of the moment. I also forget to slow down and enjoy where I am right now. Right now is a moment in time that I will never get back and sometimes I just rush through it that I am not giving it the respect that it deserves. While I have been fasting I have been trying to get back to be present in my own mind. I have to admit it has not been easy, nor have I been consistent, but I am a work in progress. I am progress before I am perfection. But living in the intention of doing the next right thing for the next person in need helps. I just have remember that it is ok for me to the be the next person in need.                                                   

                   It is not until we are truly hungry that we are fed in body, mind and spirituality. I am not going to lie, I think this reminds me of that scene in Sister Act when Maggie Smith makes Whoopie do a spiritual fast, as a punishment. For me during this Ramadan, this feeling takes a different feeling. So often I find myself eating just because the food is there. I think during this time of fasting I have given food a new meaning. Which makes eating feel different. When I was in high school I was not eating as a means to loose weight because I used to see myself as too big, I have learned that was due to dysphoria and dysmorphia. In this time the food that I would eat was to be seen a reward. I still see food that way, I do not see the removal of food as a punishment, but I do see it as something I partake in when I have been through something hard. At times I have bought myself different types of things as a reward for getting though a painful experience or procedure. I have felt attacked when my special things were taken and I thought it was just a sign that I did not deserve to keep the item. Seeing how others see food removal as a punishment, now makes me think that I was seeing that when I had food taken. Almost like it was even though the thing that I went through, in my mind, was to be rewarded. Others might have been punishing me for doing it. - Like being punished for taking steps toward my goals, because my goals are different.

 

                     The concept of food removal as punishment. When we were children it was common to see getting sent to bed without dinner as a punishment. We also saw, if you don’t finish your dinner you don’t get dessert. I think it was very easy to associate food being withheld as a form of punishment. When I was not eating during high school it almost became something that I could control. I couldn’t control the out come of interactions with people of how an adjudicator would see my performance, but I could control how much food I was putting in my body. It was also a way to take away a form of punishment. I was already being bullied and feeling low in my life. It would have been easy for someone to take things away from me. But I did not give the bullies the ability to take away food, because it was already off the table. I think this is also why I am so offended when the things I pick as a reward are taken way. (I need to get over this pepperoni shit!!!) This was a sort of defensive wall, much like the thought that if we make fun of ourselves it takes away their ammunition. Sadly, I think when we make ourselves the joke, we give them permission to use the joke. All this does is lowers our own self worth. This is something I have trouble rebuilding. I have been the punch line of jokes for so long it is hard to know when it stopped being funny, and just became hurtful.

 

                    When people tell me that fasting is hard. - It’s not fasting they are talking about it is seeing another culture and respecting it, trying it, and living it from another’s view that they see as hard. This is just a common thread in today’s society. It is easier to make fun or put down the things that are not our normal way of doing things. I have never been the type to back down from a challenge (if I want to succeed that is). I also enjoy doing the things that others are not doing. Perhaps that is why I gravitated to be the best English Horn player I can be, Oboe is already a lesser known instrument that no one plays - so it seems to reason that I a become more of an individual by playing an even lesser played instrument, English Horn. I have been told there are 2 types of English Horn players 1 oboe players that play English Horn because they have one and 2 English Horn players that play it and do it well. I have always sought out to the second. I have been known to pass up principle seats as a way to play English Horn. This shows something more for me, that I am willing and able to do the thing that I feel in my heart, without the pressure of doing the cool or popular thing. I do still have those moments of going with the crowd because I don’t want to stand out - but those tend to be things that I could go either way on or I just don’t care about. When it comes to my passions, I have the power to stand on my own.