Windward Review Vol. 20 (2022): Beginnings and Endings

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.
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).
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.
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.
Beginnings X Endings
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