11 things you WILL experience on a fast day

1. Wake up in the morning and remember suddenly that there’s a fast today and you should of started drinking 3 gallons of water daily and obsessively eating watermelon, cucumbers, and drinking gatorade about 4 days ago. Oh well. You’ll probably survive it anyway. (right? RIGHT?!) Hey, you’ll have more to complain to your friends about midfast!

2. Google up every single activity you thought you would maybe try to do to distract yourself from the numbing feeling of your empty stomach to see if it’s assur. Why is everything so complicated? You then find out it’s not really assur but rather frowned upon, but in any case it’s the 3 weeks and you can’t put yourself in danger or something like that. Then be confused why activities you do on a daily basis are dangerous, like swimming and traveling. Is sleeping dangerous too now? I mean plenty of people do die in their sleep….

3. Call a friend to discuss how hungry you are and hang up the phone feeling even more hungry because all you did was just discuss how hungry you are…that and food. Like chocolate, cheesy pasta, and pancakes.

4. You decide you want to actually know why you are fasting, so you decide to google it. (See google is good for lots of things!) You begin to wonder why Wikipedia teaches us more about the 17 of Taamuz for than our schools did?

5. Go to myzmanim.com every half an hour to remind yourself when the fast ends. Until you learn the time by heart. When that happens you calculate exactly how many milliseconds there are left to the fast and obsessively check that.

6. Go to TorahAnytime.com to join in with their streaming event. Or go to a local lecture where you listen to someone speak slightly louder than your headache and meet all the girls from high school that you forgot existed.

7. Try to convince yourself that there are positive parts of a fast. (Wait, what?!), (YES) LOTS OF GREAT THINGS, like: having less responsibilities, not having to worry if you need to reapply your lipstick (ALL DAY!), and the other stuff like introspection, and having the day to connect to Hashem.

8. On the flip side you might be experiencing the opposite. Frustration that you have school, work, and a life. getting annoyed that because one time for one fast you decided you were going to distract yourself by making food to break the fast on every single fasting person in the family expect you to do it again. Ans they all feel the need to ask you multiple times, separately, every single fast.

9. On top of that people feel the need to make you jealous that you cannot eat and drink all day. Little siblings stuffing food into your face, the smell of coffee at work, and the platters of food that are are 3 desks away from you. Oh, and just in case you haven’t experienced this wonderful scenario over this fast I’ve decided to give you the opportunity with my picture of choice as the featured image this post. Enjoy. 

10. If your me, then writing a blog post is on the list too! If you aren’t bashing your head of ideas of what to write to the universe while you are fasting, you haven’t experienced a full fast day before.

11. Of course this may be after the fast for you, depending on what side you are but this is a MUST experience: Talking to family and friends who live in different timezones to either gloat about the fact you aren’t fasting anymore, or to hear them gloat.

I hope you all have a meaningful and easy fast!
Keep in touch!
– Hadas Bat-el
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