You're Hungry

When you were young, you thought you were the most beautiful girl in the world.

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And that was because you were. You had no concept of what society’s definition of ‘pretty’ was; your mother had always told you beauty was in your heart, and that was how you understood it. You were kind, and you were smart, and you were everything that you thought was supposed to be beautiful. Your family praised you for the good things you were, and that made you beautiful, you thought.

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When you were in the third grade, one of your classmates called you a twin tower.

 

You stood in line in your elementary school cafeteria, your other tall friend to your left and your short friend in between the both of you as you talked about cartoons and books. You were seven months old when September 11th happened, but you and all your classmates knew how traumatizing the event was for everyone older than you, whether they were in South Texas or halfway across the country. That’s why it hurt so much when your classmate, the known school bully, and his posse came to you and your friends, pointing and laughing at the three of you because, “Look, it’s the twin towers and the plane”. Were you a tragedy?

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When you were in the fourth grade, the other girls in class laughed because your boobs bounced.

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You were jumping rope in gym class; in the first grade, your school had a competition for jumping rope, and you were in the top three, your shoe laces proudly showing the beads that marked your accomplishment in different jump roping skills. It was something that made you proud. But on that day, when you were jumping rope, one of the girls in your class (a friend, you had thought) pointed and laughed at you because your chest moved in a way she didn’t understand. It’s been over a decade, and you still haven’t touched a jump rope since that day. It wasn’t for you anymore, remember?

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As you grew up, you developed an eating disorder.

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No matter how much your stomach ached for food, you convinced yourself that no, you’re not hungry, you’re not hungry, you’re not hungry to a point in which it had become the truth. Your parents would joke with family and friends, telling them to be careful because you’d “eat all that food in one sitting” if they had given you food that you liked. By the time you were in middle school, you had stopped liking food all together. It had become a liability, a constant reminder of the things that made you disgusting in the eyes of everyone else around you. You became a picky eater, only eating some things because they were the only things that didn’t make you feel like the pig you thought you were. You felt trapped in an ocean, constantly wading between never eating enough and binging way too much, stuck in a dreadful loop that felt like it would last forever because food was evil and disgusting and was the reason you were the way you were.

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No one would listen to your problems. Your inner self would claw at your insides and beg for comfort, for food, for anything at all, and no one could hear her because you swallowed her down like a hard pill and buried her six feet under the ground from which you stood.

 

You were only met with advice when you’d finally tell someone, because that’s what you were taught to do when you needed help. Eat more (you did, when you binged). Eat less (you did, when you starved). Go on a diet (you could barely keep yourself eating regularly). Work out (you did, even though no one believed you).

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You were eight, nine, ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen; even now, at twenty, you’d be reminded of it. Even now, when you lay in bed at night in the still silence of your room, you can hear the little voice in the back of your head remind you that you’re disgusting after all these years. Even now, in the middle of class when your gut would gurgle and you’d take a sharp breath because that was your natural reaction now, your inner self would crawl from the depths of your mind and remind you no, you’re not hungry.

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No.

 

You’re hungry.

 

You’re starving, actually, and you’re not afraid to admit it anymore.

 

You’re learning to cook good meals that your mom happily lets you know how to make because maybe then you’ll have control over the demons that keep you up at night. You don’t binge or starve yourself anymore, eating when you’re hungry and having big enough meals that are finally deemed normal. You’re no longer trapped in the ocean; instead, you’re standing far from the sea’s shore, watching the waves as they crash against each other with a bottle of water in one hand and a piece of pizza that no longer makes you feel guilty for holding in the other.

 

And, though it’s hard, you’re not hungry anymore, and that’s the hardest thing to admit.