To Eat or Not To Eat

While I had cer­tainly reached a low point in my life, I had not the slight­est clue as to how I could escape this black hole. Caught up in the vor­tex of this hell, I cried out in anguish one night, “O God, please help me, for I’m at my wits end. I must get out of here before this place destroys me. Please show me the way.“

Just then, I saw a way out. I’d refuse to eat until the Navy released me. “What a great idea!“ I said to my self. “Since I won’t be hurt­ing any­one, what can they do to me? They can’t make me eat if I don’t wanna. What are they gonna do with an ema­ci­ated sailor? Force me to eat. I’m afraid not, for I refuse to eat another bite until they promise to dis­charge me from the Navy.“

From that moment on, I took in noth­ing by mouth except liq­uids. Before each meal, I drank a large glass of juice to quell the pangs of hunger my body suf­fered while I served food on the mess line. In between meals, I drank enough water to keep me hydrated as I con­tin­ued to sweat it out in the galley.

The first week of my fast was the hard­est. With food in front of my face and in my hands through­out most of the day, the temp­ta­tion to eat was ever present. To resist such habits as nib­bling in between meals, or test­ing the food being pre­pared, or lick­ing my fin­gers, took con­sid­er­able effort. Even more dif­fi­cult was spit­ting out the morsel of food I’d unwit­tingly stick into my mouth as I worked.

But I found solace in the most unlikely place, my body. As my mule car­ried me on its back across this bar­ren desert, in the most strik­ing fan­tasy, I saw the bub­ble of each temp­ta­tion to eat burst in front of my eyes, like a mirage. Instead, I was safely trans­ported to a small oasis that jut­ted up from the floor of the desert, like a mount of olive trees. Dis­mount­ing, I entered the gar­den to pray. While those around me slept, I sweated blood. Sev­eral times, I arose to arouse them, to no avail. As I con­tin­ued to pray, I asked God to let this cup pass if it be His will, for evil men waited out­side this gar­den to do me harm.

As an angry crew forced its way onto the mess decks, in real­ity, I was forced to leave my fan­tasy, to help serve them their din­ner which, in their eyes, had been unduly delayed. With the open­ing of the mess decks for a slightly delayed evening meal, I got lost in this desert of dead heads. Sep­a­rated from my mule, I crawled back into my fan­tasy, across the hot desert sands on my hands ’n’ knees, in search of a way out as I plunked down spoon­ful after spoon­ful of food onto the trays of these wild angry boors.