Written after wanting something felt embarrassing.
𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒
There’s a kind of shame I’ve always carried around hunger. It’s less about the stomach and the thighs and more about the implication that I need something at all. It’s the exposure that comes with wanting, the discomfort of admitting that there’s something missing in me that I can’t create on my own. Growing up, I somehow absorbed the idea that needing anything made me fragile, and fragility was dangerous. So hunger became something I tried to master. I didn’t eat when I wanted to. I ate when it felt controlled, earned, aesthetic. If I could delay it, deny it, dress it in rules and rituals, then maybe I wouldn’t have to feel how exposed I actually was.
𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒
It gets worse in the summer, always. Maybe it’s the heat, maybe it’s the clothes, maybe it’s just the weight of being seen. My mind slips back into old patterns regardless of the season though. I want to disappear into that sharper version of myself, the one who looks like she’s barely there. Like she doesn’t need anything, like she’s already transcended something ordinary. I tell myself that if I can get smaller, if I can wear my restraint like a crown, then maybe I’ll feel less desperate inside. Sometimes I almost believe it. That by appearing weak, thin, delicate, I’m proving how strong I actually am. But the logic always frays at the edges, because deep down, I know I’m not feeding just the hunger in my body when I refuse food. I’m silencing the parts of me that want comfort and patience. I’m punishing the child in me who once believed she could be held without earning it.
𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒
There are moments when I wonder what I’m trying to prove, and to whom. When I catch myself skipping meals, ignoring hunger cues, pretending I don’t care, I realize I’m still trying to be above need. As if needing made me unlovable. As if being a body, with wants and cravings were something to be ashamed of.
The only time I ever truly tried to change the way I saw food was after my father died. Something shifted in me then. Now, in retrospect, grief cracked me open and I came face to face with the part of myself that could care, that could nurture, even when I felt hollow. For the first time, I didn’t want to punish my body. I wanted to feed it, maybe even protect it.
For about a year and a half, I tried to repair my relationship with food. At first, I was structured and deliberate, almost gentle. I changed who I followed on social media, made a conscious effort to stop punishing myself at the table, tried to sit with my meals like I deserved them. There was something maternal that awakened in me after my father died, as if grief unlocked a part of me that wanted to care for what was left. But somewhere along the way, I lost the thread.
𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒
I don’t remember exactly when it happened where the care turned into craving, where nourishment turned into numbing. Somewhere, I started mistaking excess for healing. I told myself I was being kind while eating fried chicken for breakfast, eating food I didn’t even want just to feel comforted. Maybe it wasn’t about food anymore. Maybe I had just switched addictions and called it recovery.
𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒
I gained 20 kilos then. When I saw the number on the scale, I surprisingly didn’t spiral. I didn’t starve myself the next day. I actually reached out to a dietitian and tried to do things “the right way.” I thought I was finally learning how to lose weight without hurting myself. But weeks into that plan, I caught myself counting out the exact number of almonds she put on my list for the week. That’s when I felt that familiar, buried ache again. The one that always comes when food stops being nourishment and starts being proof of something else.
𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒
I don’t know if I’ll ever recover from this, from the way hunger rewired my sense of worth. I feel like the hunger will stay.
𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒
I wish One Day They’ll Realize I’m Not Real so I won’t have to prove it to them.
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