Hunger
By Ava Keck
The compliments feel like dirty money.
Expensive. Vulgar. Intoxicating. Addictive. Stolen.
My fingers tingle––not at what is there, but at what is not.
The waves of exhaustion resemble the sleepiness of bourbon.
Days, weeks, years I trudge through wet cement.
Hollowness rages inside me.
Yet I am rich. I am wealthy with praise, attention & alluring delicacy––but I am a siren. The perceived beauty is a child of my poverty. My hate. My suffocation.
My body submits to darkness. Suddenly, I awaken––clawing into oblivion. An explosive longing for someone to reach inside: to peel away my thin skin & pull my drowning soul from the water. From the coffee. From the cigarettes. From the pills. From the liquor. To hear my screaming. To soothe my maudlin whispers: I am hungry, I am hungry, I am hungry.
Now, the praise is my only fuel.
My bones are cold.
Bruises for breakfast.
Sweat.
Cracked lips.
Bile.
Can’t they see my hunger? Detect my lies?
Doctor?
I am dying.
I am feminine.
My affluence is drowning me.
I fear the praise. Which do I let die, it or myself?
I am hungry.
I am angry. Where is my hero?
I shout into the abyss.
I wade, I cry, I wait.
I am homeless in my own body.
As though I am possessing that of another.
I am hungry.
I am curious.
I make exhausted attempts in blurred directions.
I seek, and I fall.
I seek, and I snap.
I seek, and I break.
I seek, and I find.
I eat.
I seek.
I feel.
My liquid emotions loosen the cement.
I begin to crawl, to awaken, to see shreds of light, of satiety: through melting webs of intoxication, through snapping strings of misguided beliefs.
I cry for lost time.
Free of inebriation, I feel energy. Abundance grows. There is no bottom. There is no external wealth. Only the nutrition of will.
The will to love.
The will to be.
The will to forgive.
The choice to seek.
Ava Keck
6/1/21
My name is Ava. As a college student, I battled with an eating disorder, but struggled to recover in a world saturated in diet culture. This piece is a testament to the irony between internal suffering and thin-idealizing praise that those recovering from an eating disorder face. I hope to inspire those struggling with their relationship to their body and food, to seek out the amazing anti-diet, HAES, intuitive eating and body neutral community that continues to grow, support recovery and defy the oppressive forces that breed eating disorders.
