I have a spiritual (as in unexplainable, lasting over time and space and irrational) connection with my aunt. We barely spoke this year because of my perpetual crisis and refusal to believe that anyone blood related is any good to me. I finally went to visit her and found out that she did this year what I try to do every year, which is to go a week without food, only with water. And she couldn’t afford days off since she works for herself. But she did it while doing her job. I didn’t even think about it this year*, though last year in only four days of fasting, I was already feeling restored. I decided to start 2024 with a week of full fasting.

A week and a great disappointment (mostly with myself and the situation that came about to prove once again I am so so far from healing) later, I decided to end this year with a week of full fasting.

Complicated with a schedule so full until one week before Christmas, so I chose that week to do it. Problem is I didn’t have time to ready …surprisingly not my body, but my mind. The body, when I started eating rice and drinking green tea went into fasting mode already. Fasting mode in which I still am now, as in I do intermittent fasting now – 16/8. I do not impose this on myself, but I will listen to the body.

The thing is that I ate sweets and drank alcohol until two days before I started the full fasting, it is cold and I usually eat the most in winter, and I caught a cold right before starting the fasting.

The first two days were surprisingly good, almost what I was expecting from the middle days to be. I was full of energy, creative and made a gift for a fellow artist for the Secret Santart event organized by Atoma Art Community. I went through a few designs before finding the best one I could do for the purpose of creating something the artist can further decorate according to her wishes. I also made a kit to create decorations out of orange peels. And since I would send it in January, I made it my unconventional Christmas tree. ✨

And then it hit me on the third day …nausea, tiredness, which I was expecting the first day, and a constant nagging of the mind for food. Mind you, the body was fine. I was amused, but had little energy to do anything. Even funnier is that the audio book I was listening to, “Elantris” by Brandon Sanderson is about damned fallen Gods condemned to feel like starving though they didn’t actually need to eat to survive. One of the newest damned characters figured out that by giving the others a purpose, they would not succumb to thier desires and pains anymore. So yeah, the first two days I had purpose. Now what? Well, now nothing. Actually I went for a walk and bought myself a cosy loooong sweater from a nice second hand shop I found the week before. I spent the evening reading or listening.

The fourth day, I had to work which I do from home, and I had it confirmed yet again that a meaningless job is worthless for the mind. It is actually worst than no purpose and doing nothing at all because my mind broke and I did eat some digestive biscuits. The rest of the days I had the internet shut off too, and this day, I managed to really keep social media at a minimum. I only spoke to the people I needed to.

The fifth day I started doing yoga. I bought myself as Christmas gift a feetup yoga thingy and started playing with it. I mentioned the body was fine. Power to her !💪🏼I also started working on a project I have quite some trouble figuring out, but I know I will eventually.

While I was pondering that this constant nagging of my mind for food, planning what to cook (why the fuck do I even know how to do that?!) when this is over, isn’t allowing for the clarity of mind I usually have when doing full fasting, there it was! Just a brief moment, but it felt like some heavy shackles fell off. And then it was back to dreaming about red lentel soup, which I cooked btw, and is very good. I still dream about it. I have one last meal of it for tomorrow 😍

The sixth day I started raving and writing.

During this fasting period I finished “Braiding sweetgrass” and listened to “Gathering moss” by Robin Wall Kimmerer, both amazing works of what it truly means to be in connection with nature even in this highly technological world and full of teachings from indigenous Americans cultures. There is a world in Potowatomi to say “the power that causes a mushroom to rise up from earth over night“. 🥰

Some food for thought:

Shouldn’t the moral high ground belong to the people who have found a way of living with natural processes rather than battling them?

I also finished “The reason I jump” and read “Fall down seven times, get up eight“, both by non-verbal autistic Japanese author Naoki Higashida. Though I cringed at the self help title of the second book (yes, it’s a Japanese old saying, it’s still 😬), both are a treasure of mindfulness, empathy and kindness and make me want to hope for a better world.

I also read the dystopic novel “The original” by Brandon Sanderson which was a bit of a mindfuck and some novels from Isaac Asimov, which were strangely and disturbingly in the same tone of Sanderson’s novel.

And then I told myself why not read a feminist book written by an Afro-American woman which was sitting in my to read list for almost two years? Oh, it was so perfect! If I needed to read anything this year, it was “Ain’t I a woman” by Bell Hooks.

The last day was a drag. I barely had motivation to do anything. It was Christmas, mind you. So I figured I’d go for a walk in the park near me, which is Bucharest central park, Cișmigiu. It’s Christmas, people are busy eating and stuff… or not. They were out. So many of them I couldn’t find a place in the park to sit quietly. And to top it all off it was windy…

…and very hot, 16 degrees Celsius.

What I gained from all this?

I wake up in the morning with energy. I want to do stuff. I want to live.

That’s enough.

I wanted to die all year, it was getting really scary…

Disclaimer: I do not recommend this for any kind of mental health or other health issues as a solution. I couldn’t access the mindset to do this when I was in depression in spring. If anyone would have suggested it, I would have went out of my mind with rage.

*I did think to do this after the surgery because I wasn’t supposed to eat much for a week, but then I realized it wasn’t actually feasible.