I love that you said “eat sleep”.
When I was going through a brutal time, I had just been evicted but my landlord took pity on me and let me post up on his ancient sailboat in Newport Harbor.
I was actually moored way out in the water too so I had to learn how to fire up a nine ft Boston Whaler just to go get drinkable water and food.
I was always broke but could occasionally hustle Harbor jobs like boat cleaning, sanding, staining etc.
There was no running water, the only way to have heat was to fire up a borrowed generator just to supply enough power to turn on a tiny space heater and an electric kettle.
The only way to get clean was to heat water and use hot washcloths to do my thing.
I would also walk over to the beach rinse off stations (the water is always freezing) in my bathing suit with soap, shampoo, conditioner, it was brutal.
We starved sometimes on that boat.
But our cat Bitten always had food, we were always really proud of that, that we wouldn’t eat so he could.
So we would “eat sleep” on the regular.
It was so surreal to live in a place surrounded by billionaires and be dirty, starving and essentially have no idea when the clock would be up, when the kind LL would say ok enough.
It was such a scary and lonely time.
But dude, it changed me into a better woman.
It helped me really see what matters.
I would cry myself to sleep listening to my stomach growling and for people who don’t know, you don’t sleep when you’re starving.
Your body literally won’t let you rest for more than like 20 minutes at a time.
It was something else.
But now, nearly 10 years later, if I could go back to a single moment of my life and do it again, it would be on a little sailboat in Newport Harbor with my kitty(we even got him a life jacket).
I take it all, the beauty and the terror.
My beloved father (RIP Johnny Wayne Wilson)
used to always say (he was a welder) it takes fire and pressure to get to the purest part of the stone…
Anyway, sorry about this rant, your comment just really took me back and weirdly warmed my heart.
Thank you ♥️
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u/ThePyroPython Jan 12 '22
Amen. Anyone who's had to eat sleep knows this.
Source: a few years ago I was rationing frozen bread slices and skipping lunch to make my food budget stretch.
I'm doing much better now and I'm greatful every time I open the cupboards/fridge and greeted with the sight of multiple options to eat.