My 22 Days & 22 Nights Fasting with only Water – a Journal by CG FEWSTON

September 6 · Day 1 · Thursday

The first morning

I’m embarking on a fast for 22 days and 22 nights for clarity in my life and career, in my wife’s life and career, and to break myself before God. I’ve prepared my whole life for this moment, and I feel confident I’ll be able to finish it. But what truths shall I learn? What answers await me? On this Thor’s Day, I don’t know.

I weighed 215 pounds. I expect to lose 30 to 50, maybe less.

Upon waking, the smell of freshly cut tomatoes struck me as new, as though I’d never smelled a tomato before. No thought of eating one. I’ve spent the last twenty years, off and on, fasting. My longest before this was 14 days and 14 nights, in December 2014.

I thought more about my son, Thor, and his eating. Perhaps I’m supposed to become more mindful of the people around me.

On television I came across two foods I’d never heard of. Confetti, made of almonds, in colors: green for engagements, red for graduations, white for weddings. A factory in Sulmona, Italy, Ovid’s birthplace, passed from father to son for two hundred years. I thought of Thor, and his sons, and of leaving them something lasting, so they would not have to climb out of the same shame of poverty I climbed out of.

My birthday on October 17 will mark the end of my thirty-ninth year. Twenty-two days feels like the right time.

The other food was morgadinhos, decorative almond sweets from Portugal. One day I’d like to go there and try them. Axton would love them more than I would.

My wife is the only person who knows. On September 7 she will fast for one day and go to church that Friday night. I’m proud of her spiritual growth over the last six months.

1 Corinthians 6:19

September 7 · Day 2 · Friday

Water, and nothing else

The first smell today was freshly cut capsicum. That was about the only thought I had concerning food. Axton finished her one-day fast. She drank coffee, tea, and juice.

Mine is water only, the longest since I started at nineteen. The diarrhea set in, as it does. Headaches too, from coffee and tea. I usually never drink water.

I’m averaging seven liters a day. A little fatigue. My thoughts stay on the spiritual part of it. Twenty years of this has taught me to ignore the impulses. For the last several years, since 2014, I had eaten what I wanted, with moderation.

I mean to conserve energy. It will be hard, with a two-year-old. I’ll still give my time to the ones I love.

Gandhi’s longest fasts were twenty-one days, and he had lemon juice in the water. Even that appeals to me. I won’t have it. New toothbrushes. No toothpaste. Water only, for three weeks.

What will that do to taste? I don’t know. Someone knows through science. This fast is meant to teach me what science cannot.

September 8 · Day 3 · Saturday

Family is worth living for

The headaches from caffeine began, and the body kept clearing itself. The hard part was playing with Thor at the playground next to our home in Discovery Bay. He was a delight.

Axton said my smell had improved, and that I no longer had bad breath beside her. My thoughts were slower. I had trouble remembering what I had meant to do ten minutes from now.

Fame and fortune, as they relate to the writing, don’t matter. If I can spend my life with Axton and Thor, I’d have peace. Family is worth living for.

September 9 · Day 4 · Sunday

How to break it

I thought about the end. Communion. A little red wine and crackers, and prayers. The wine for the blood. The crackers for the broken flesh.

The skin on my hands and face has begun to tighten. Smell is sharper. The body looking for a way to stay alive.

I have a wife who is with me on this. That is enough for a Sunday.

I did not break the fast with wine. On the morning of September 28 I had a glass of cold V8 and crackers. By then my stomach rejected the thought of wine as much as it had come to reject water.

September 10 · Day 5 · Monday

Remember Nature

I rode the ferry with Axton to her work, then the MTR. Before the train left, a young man in his early twenties, heavy, walked the cars looking for a seat. His shirt said “Remember Nature.” I took it as a message.

The car lurched. He fell into me and said, “Sorry. Sorry.” I said, “No worry. No worry. It’s okay.” The touch made the message feel real. Later I drank sparkling water and glacier water from the source. No bad reaction.

The birds and trees looked sharper than they usually do in Hong Kong. I rode the upper deck of the ferry, over the harbor, green mountains and islands around it.

On the ferry I felt I was being asked to get on my knees. I hesitated, then did, and pretended to look out the window. After we docked, alone at the top of the boat, I felt it again. Not weakness. Compliance. In the presence of holiness, a person tends to kneel.

Psalm 51:17

Make time for prayer. Breathe out what is impure and breathe in what is pure. Drink as much water as you like. Limit what you do with the body. Expect to pee a lot. Take it seriously. A fast can be deadly.

September 11 · Day 6 · Tuesday

The hardest day so far

Psalm 35:13 · Ezra 8:21

In the Greek, confess means to say along with, to agree, to speak the same thing. Fasting can be that. Breaking the body to agree that the spirit is not finished when the body is.

Most people live looking for a perfect job, a perfect house, a perfect day at the beach. Perfection doesn’t exist, because even perfection has flaws. Take a wrong turn, get lost, and come out on a cliff over the sea. Then the words come. This is perfect. Perfection exists in the imperfection.

Day six was the hardest so far, in the body and in the feelings. A Tuesday the country does not forget. Seventeen years ago I was driving a white van back from taking orphans to school, windows down, tired from the night shift, on my way to French at Howard Payne, thinking how peaceful the morning was.

John 11:35

September 12 · Day 7 · Wednesday

We belong to the stars

We belong to the stars. We live in the flesh and exist in something else. The body can be a gift if it is used with discernment. It can also be a curse, held to addictions and excess we tell ourselves we cannot leave.

Life gets simpler on water. I no longer care for the internet. I take pleasure in the small thing. On the night walks, after sundown, when the mountains and the beach stay lit in faint shadows, I sit in that moment as if I were on a bench by the bay, waiting for the ferry to bring me the love of my life. Often the ferry does.

September 13 · Day 8 · Thursday

Old Smokey

Sleeplessness for a few days. The naps are less sleep than resting with my eyes closed, thinking about old events. That is what a person does in boredom.

One winter, I was a toddler on wooden crutches, a cast on a clubfoot, a horse-brown corduroy coat, hobbling out over the snow. Uncle Gary and Aunt Cindy had brought a Shetland pony, old Smokey. The neighborhood children came out by the dozens. My mother asked if I wanted to ride. I said no. I wanted the other kids to have a chance. I knew they might not get another.

Those were the American times I want to give my son. I was crippled, and I was happy, watching them ride. All were my friends that day.

September 14 · Day 9 · Friday

Forty-five liters

In the first seven days I drank forty-five liters. Now less each day. The stomach is shrinking. The weight is coming off. Water is boring. I can see why fasts past twenty days are often done with juice.

The day drags. Time has knelt. Will I end?

September 15 · Day 10 · Saturday

The small moments

Weekends are a blessing. I pass the day with my wife and son. I still cook for Axton. It doesn’t bother me. The home is warm.

She is watching Friends again. Laughter helps. The longer walks are getting harder. The important part of life is the small moment with the people in the room. There’s nothing bigger.

September 16 · Day 11 · Sunday

Mangkhut

Super Typhoon Mangkhut hit today, the most destructive storm Hong Kong had on record. We were safe. The living room flooded a little. The rain lasted more than ten hours. The wind didn’t let up until after ten at night. Axton said she had never seen anything like it.

Matthew 12:31–32

September 17 · Day 12 · Monday

A loft in Arlington

Without food, the meals come back with the smell still on them.

About twenty-two years ago I summered at my older sister’s loft in Arlington, near Dallas. On her nights off we’d smoke, then drive her white Jeep to the Sonic next door for cherry limeades, Pearl Jam on the radio. Then Jack in the Box or Taco Bueno, and back by a quarter to ten.

She’d load the bowl. We’d sit on the floor with Seinfeld starting at ten, my first time watching it, and eat. I’d have the Mucho Nachos. Kramer would bang through the door. I was happy to be there with her.

That summer will always have a room in me. If some small piece of me lives on, I hope it is the door of that loft opening, and KC young again, asking what kept me.

September 18 · Day 13 · Tuesday

The hump

Today is the hump. After this the days count down. I learned years ago to enjoy the specific moment a fast can give, if you slow down.

Why don’t more people fast? Stop. Breathe until sunlight on a ceiling is enough.

Yom Kippur begins.

September 19 · Day 14 · Wednesday

Food in the story

The universe keeps sending the same signal. Memory and meals hold a place in a life. American fiction, with few exceptions, leaves the meal out of the plot.

Proust did not. Hemingway did not. I can still taste those ham and onion sandwiches by a river in Spain. Why not use that more?

Yom Kippur ends.

September 20 · Day 15 · Thursday

Seven days left

The dreams are stronger. I woke and checked the bed to be sure my body had not stayed under the covers.

I rest two or three times a day. Eyes closed, not really asleep, as if lying on my grave and unwilling to die. Then a short slip into sleep, and I wake as if coming up from deep water, and I am still alive.

1 Corinthians 2:11

After today, seven days. Then October, the month I was born, in 1979. Who was I before that?

September 21 · Day 16 · Friday

Water turns

After two weeks, water has become repulsive, as if it meant harm. I still have to drink it. The flesh is tightening on the bones. People on the short walks notice. They say I look extremely different.

Is this healthy? Starvation, for any reason, is not. What does the spirit say? Excelsior.

September 22 · Day 17 · Saturday

One household

The weekend brings determination. I am at peace because I can spend the time with Axton and Thor. They are the reminder of why I live.

Axton says she and Thor are eating less since I started. I have noticed it too. We are one household. Is there a connection, or is it coincidence?

September 23 · Day 18 · Sunday

Even the writing

Simple acts, even writing in this journal, have become exhausting. I’ll try to write more tomorrow. I persist. Now I spend time with my wife and my son.

September 24 · Day 19 · Monday

What is real?

The stomach has shrunk further. It recoils at every drop. Small amounts, or it aches, and I want to vomit. There is nothing to vomit.

On walks, people look like thin sheets of who they are. Bodies told how to act, moving without any sense of what they carry. Ghosts. Shadows. Asleep. I ask: what is real?

September 25 · Day 20 · Tuesday

Some of it stays mine

I have not written down all of what I saw and felt. Some of it stays mine. You have your own road.

Writing, even when it is trying to be true, is broken into pieces. Life is too complicated for small words. To take up writing is, at some point, to take up failure.

Over twenty days I have learned things I cannot yet sort. Who could?

September 26 · Day 21 · Wednesday

Gandhi’s number

Twenty-one days. That was the longest Gandhi fasted, and he had lemon juice.

These last days I have learned what it is to be without pleasure. I have wanted to vomit. Empty. I drink what I can, mostly sips. Maybe twelve ounces, or less. Dangerous.

Even the morning shower is labor. It leaves me weaker than before I stepped in.

What person chooses this? I have my reasons. They do not make the path easier.

September 27 · Day 22 · Thursday

The last day

If there is one thing I can bring back, it is this. The spirit has more strength than the body, and more than most people are willing to test. Most people settle into a routine and forget how foreign a life can be.

This was the hardest physical act I have ever done. For the last three days I was in pain, as if the body had turned on me. Many times I wanted to stop. I did not.

I know no one will care, and that is fine. I did not do it to impress anyone. I did it to see the limit, to face it on my own terms, and to keep a record.

I began at 215 pounds. I ended at 190. Twenty-five pounds in three weeks. The weight was never the reason. It is only a measure.

Give thanks for your life, even if you hate the circumstances. Life is meant to be a test. Give thanks for the people you love, and give thanks to God.

Romans 15:13

I found the ends of myself. I’m not sure I will be the same, or that I will ever be able to explain all of it.

It is finished.

John 14:26