"the truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. you've just got to find the ones worth suffering for." - bob marley
for as little as i find the time to write these days, i feel like silent bob, like everything that comes out of my mouth should be really fucking profound or, at the very least, really fucking pretentious. it's a lot of pressure until i realize that i've likely never said much of anything profound. that, and, to compensate, i am quite full of pretense, so we are just going to keep on keepin' on like this was my 12th post in the last 34 days.
this time last week i was coming off of 24 hours of not eating. this is not unusual for me on mondays into tuesdays. i've always had a tendency to eat lunch, go play softball, and call my water when i get home my dinner. it made me feel better about myself in terms of whatever filth i had ingested for lunch, and it made me feel like i could eat something equally
and therein those couple of thoughts set into motion a chain of events that included, yes, making the decision to finish out the "30 hour famine", but also email a bunch of friends and try and recruit them to take a fasting challenge right along with me.
week one would be 30 hours.
week two would be 48.
week three would 60.
lastly, week four would be 72.
there would be no hard and fast rules. for me, i would and will just be drinking water. for others, who am i to set the terms to their sacrifice, you know? so, that's on them to decide. in the stead of eating, i would try to corral my feelings of hunger and direct them elsewhere, towards the places in this city and this country and this world that have hungry people. hungry people not by choice. not douche-bags like me. hungry people because they are fucking hungry. because they can't afford food. because they are homebound and cannot create their own meals. because they live in nasty, forgotten places where food is a luxury not to be shared with the least of these. i would think about these hungry people. maybe say a prayer for them. and i will see what i feel and see what comes out of my experience.
i've felt lost the last six or eight weeks in a lot of ways. i've felt aimless. directionless. a lack of motivation. a lack of drive. a sense of sour. a sense of anger. a sense of shame. a sense of power. a sense of hate. not all at once. not all the time. these feelings come and go and these feelings are fleeting, but i worry, more than anything else, is that i have lost something of myself.
during the chemo portion of my life, i felt everything. i couldn't take a step without being reminded of pain. i couldn't comfortably do much of anything. each day was a trial, to one degree or another, and i am certain, at this point today, that i became conditioned and connected to the trial. my pain and my trials delivered to me a goal. to get to the next day. to smile at the girls. to not be hateful because my perspective was constantly being reinvented and redesigned. i didn't love the pain. but i loved not allowing the pain and journey to defeat me. i was proud.
after the treatment ended and the medicine began to exit my body, normal came back in every sense of the word and my world. quickly the inconvenience of the chemo was replaced with more random issues, this time asthma type symptoms that have prevented me from renewing my running. it's all been quite the bother, but it's not cancer, and it's not chemo, so who the fuck cares?
i've been at a constant crossroads with the church and my church since the advent of this blog. today is no different. so, now what (again)?
i am now disconnected from many that were and had been constants in my life for a long, long time. i am trying to decide if the emotions regarding these disconnections are fearful or of relief. who do i just let go? who do i work to get back? what if i care more than they do? what if i just don't care? the feeling(s) is(are) probably mutual.
new opportunities are scheduled to begin in a few short weeks. am i excited or apathetic?
i'm not sure. probably both.
what a cop out.
i need to be shaken. i need to be stirred. but not all of those options include being in control.
and so, i made a choice to be in control.
to feel.
something.
i chose to be hungry.
what i am doing is not anything special. time will tell if what i am doing is actually anything spiritual. i don't need food for days anyway. neither do you. i just think i do. my body will tell me otherwise, and it'll be up to me to do something with that feeling. something positive. to make a minor difference.
i am proud of my friends for joining me during these hunger games, because they are likely doing it for much less selfish and much more righteous reasons than i. i will pray for them while we are hungry together, too.
i'm struggling to find a point in all of this melodrama.
yeah, me too. the point is this. there are many points.
feeling hungry isn't going to convince me there is or isn't a god or make me feel better that i will or won't have a good scan in november. feeling hungry won't likely open up my breathing passages nor will it hone my focus on the things outside of work and my family that seem so super-fucking cloudy at the moment.
but it will remind me that hunger is a god damn ridiculous problem that we continue to perpetuate through ignorance and our own over indulgence. we perpetuate the problem (just like most of our problems) by pointing the finger at the government or the president or someone that isn't us while we stuff our fatty fat faces with fatty fat cheeseburgers because america.
and as my ire rises, then what?
clarity? direction? purpose? intent? a hot dog?
we'll see.
the odds are always in our favor.
