Why Are You Doing Ramadan if You're Not Muslim?
(4 minute read) — Estimated Time of Arrival X Last Ramadan edition on grief.
Welcome to Estimated Time of Arrival, your Wednesday newsletter where yours truly, Paula Romeu-Garcia, chats sh!t about life and drops nuggies of wisdom sometimes.
It’s a valid question. I’m a curious person, I say.
Remove vices, distractions and pleasures and what’s left of a person? Who are we without those things? What have you been avoiding? Which tears have you not been crying?
I asked myself and ventured into a long fast to find the answers.
A generous friend gave me the keys to his place in the Rockaways last weekend. As I sat on his sofa to edit the latest porno I directed, my laptop crashed. A 700$ repair jobby. A week at the shop.
Five years ago, who am I kidding, a year ago, I would’ve cried. Gotten angry at the injustice, why me? why now? Would’ve made a big deal.
This time, God winked and I smiled.
C’est la vie. Ramadan has been teaching me patience. Patience to eat, to cum, to have what I want when it’s time not when I want it. To accept reality as it comes and flow like the water I confess I’ve been drinking the last few days.
I woke up the next day at 5AM by my laptop’s corpse. Unmoved, I ate my suhoor, took Snoop to the beach and switched off my phone for the first time in forever.
Reading Rupi Kaur I felt so seen. Sitting on the damp sand, I witnessed my tears turn into cascades, turn into a river that kissed the mouth of the sea.
It was obvious.
Rock-a-nugget 1: That which I had been avoiding were the last stages of my grief.
You don’t let go once.
Nobody died. Yet the feeling of loss is like a lump under the skin.
You can barely see it, but you can feel it when you know it’s there. And you always know it’s there. No matter how many pints, lines, or body parts you drink, sniff or fuck, it comes with you everywhere.
Last year, not only I lost my life partner, my best friend and everything we had built together, my job, our home, our partnership, a sense of safety… I also lost the dreams we dreamt together that now will never be.
it isn’t what we left behind
that breaks me
it’s what we could have built
had we stayed
A life I thought was everything and I’ll never have.
The person I was, who got me where I am, and to whom I’m grateful everyday, but who no longer exists.
I also lost a friendship, a mentor, a father figure whom I thought was rock solid and whom I no longer recognize.
I hate crying, I told my friends many a times, it makes me feel weak.
Grieving is a journey of shedding or dying.
But there’s nothing stronger or braver than stopping. Then facing the inner turmoil.
Rock-a-nugget 2: You don’t let go once. You let go over and over until there’s nothing to let go of any longer.
Stages of grief.
Not new but bares repeating, just as the cycle repeats itself disorderly until it’s done. Can you see yourself in any of the stages?
Denial: Unwillingness to accept the new reality.
When my ex-husband left me, for weeks I thought I was in a dream or a nightmare. I refused to believe it was happening. “It’s just a tantrum, a nasty argument”. Even my close friends would reassure me he would come back when he realized “the mistake he was making”.
We were wrong. But he wasn’t*.
Listen to your I can’ts and I won’ts. What could you be in denial about?
Anger: Madness at the prospect of the new reality.
Betrayed, scorned, jealous, I drank, partied, escaped. I hated him, missed him, said bad words, told the world of my despair. I worked hard and partied harder. To survive, to forget.What can you turn your rage into? Art? A physical feat like learning to do a handstand or the splits?
Bargaining: Trying to change or control, to go back to the old reality.
In my despair, I attached myself to the first beautiful boy who gave me butterflies. I knew it was dangerous, I was raw, vulnerable, enraged. I jumped into the relationship like a starving man to a rice-a-plate, said the three sacred words fast and meant every one of them. We both ended up getting hurt.What or who are you trying to control? To what end? Can you loosen your grip?
Depression: Hopelessness.
Avoiding my solitude for fear of the overwhelming sadness it sometimes brings, only served to increase its weight. Pins and needles under every inch of skin, like an itchy costume I couldn’t escape. A heaviness. At every corner, every reflection, it’s there. Salty water held by shaky eyelids dying to burst if only I opened the floodgates.What tears have you not been crying? Which goodbyes still need saying?
But, at last…
Acceptance: Embracing the new reality.
It doesn’t happen all at once. But as I put my feet in the cold Rockaway water bathed in the warm sun, I felt some sadness leave me. Acceptance is not the end of grief but the beginning of adjusting to the new reality. Honoring the loss (or losses) we’ve experienced.
*For when he left, he free’d me.
Rock-a-nugget 3: If you don’t learn to sit alone in your own company without wanting to crawl outta your own skin, you’ll never find true peace.
Why did I embark on Ramadan if I’m not Muslim?
I wanted to find out what I had been avoiding, stare down the barrel of my big feelings and learn to smile at them. So I did.
If any of it helps, it’s yours.
Gracias for being here with me another week, dear reader.
Look forward to hearing from you.
Agápe,
Paula x