Ramadan

Ramadan starts today. So Happy Ramadan to all my Muslim friends!

I won't even attempt to try and explain Ramadan to all my non-Muslim readers. I will say that my experience with Ramadan was a few years ago when I was seeing a Muslim guy from the Middle East. He is a guy dedicated to his faith and I respect that. I don't have a faith of any kind so I found it very interesting to learn about a new and different faith from that that I was raised in.

Anyway I digress . . . every morning at about 4am BAH would wake up (and so would I because his alarm was loud) and head into the lounge to eat then pray, then climb back into bed before waking again at a more decent hour and going to work. In the evening the fast was broken with a date (the food not the social outing) and food.

Most people know that Ramadan requires fasting from food and drink during daylight hours, but it's also fasting from anything sexual. And yes that means no sex, but the most difficult thing I found was that meant no kiss goodbye in the morning or hug hello in the afternoon. It took several weeks to get used to, but once I did it was ok. Especially knowing that it was for a specific period of time.

During daylight hours it was an odd time for me and I wasn't even the one doing it. Especially when the night hours were very much the same as normal.

This year I don't have BAH doing Ramadan beside me. But I'd rather he was doing it here and I was supporting him through than to not have him here at all.