Ramadan Mubarak

Ramadan Mubarak ❤

Just to pre-empt 30 days of questions: No, I do not fast for Ramadan. Ramadan is important in many ways, but for me, fasting is not one of them.

The first reason is that I have extremely complex thoughts on how certain terms in the Qur’an are translated, specifically the ones relating to eating/drinking and how they are used. It would require a very long post on the subject, but in summary, I do not believe the direction to refrain from eating and drinking is literally referring to food; in fact, if you shore up the root terms and compare them to all appearances in the Qur’an, what you find is that they are heavily idiomatic with much deeper, more complex meanings.

For me personally, focusing on those more complex meanings is so much more important, even to the exclusion of the idea of physical-food fasting all together.

But that’s a dissertation for another day.

The second, much bigger reason is probably that I am in fact an eating-disorder survivor (anorexia). Fasting and any form of dieting is dangerous waters for me. It’s funny because, when I talk about having survived anorexia, people will kind of laugh since I am literally huge. How can an overweight person have anorexia?

Well that’s the thing: to survive anorexia, I had to let go of any kind of food restriction entirely, and that did lead to over-eating. To this day I still struggle with my relationship with food and, in addition to still fighting the urge to go back to those habits, I also am in a losing battle with food addiction.

Living in a world between “anorexia” and “food addiction” is a bit wild, but sadly there is no middle ground for me. The way my brain works is all-or-nothing, heavily tied into my Borderline Personality Disorder. There is no “just eat less” or “just eat more” — there is only “eat nothing” or “eat everything”.

At the end of the day, I am mentally ill and I have always been transparent about that. I am not ashamed of it, nor am I afraid of it, and what I observe or do not observe during Ramadan is definitely between me, and God.

That is true for each and every person as well, so if you feel you are struggling this Ramadan and are judging yourself heavily? Don’t be so hard on yourself.

God is aware of everything you do, but most importantly, that which is in your heart, mind, and spirit.