Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

by Roxane Gay

There is something about actively using my body that makes me feel even more vulnerable.

If I don’t have to teach or travel for work, I spend most of my time talking myself out of leaving my house. I can order something in. I can make do with what I have. Tomorrow, I promise myself. Tomorrow I will face the world. If it’s late in the week, there are several tomorrows until Monday.

During my twenties, I preferred men’s clothing because I could hide my femininity, feeling it made me safer.

My parents, I knew, would freak out because they were still holding on to the idea of who they thought I was.

I still see a woman with wings, a woman who can escape anything she wants, even her body.

I wish I could say I had some kind of thoughtful approach to my tattoos, but I didn’t. I just wanted to have control over (the marking of) my body.

I’m overweight. I hope to not always be, but for now, this is my body. I am coming to terms with that. I am trying to feel less shame about that. When I mark myself with ink, or when I have that done to me, I am taking some part of my skin back. It is a long, slow process. This is my fortress.

That’s when I feel a new kind of panic because I am seen in a different way.

That version of myself is terrifying and maybe even beautiful, so I panic, and within days or weeks, I undo all the progress I’ve made.

When people try to shame me for being fat, I feel rage. I get stubborn. I want to make myself fatter to spite the shamers, even though the only person I would really be spiting is myself.

I envy the way their clothes hang listlessly from their bodies, as if they aren’t even being worn but, rather, floating—a veritable vestment halo rewarding their thinness.

And still, I am envious because these girls have willpower.

Somehow, I never become that girl. And then I hate myself for wanting something so terrible and I rage at the world that hates me for my body and how it is so markedly visible and the same world that forces too many girls and women to try their best to disappear. My rage is often silent because no one wants to hear fat-girl stories of taking up too much space and still finding nowhere to fit.

At first, it feels good, savoring each bite, the world falling away. I forget about my stresses, my sadness. All I care about are the flavors in my mouth, the extraordinary pleasure of the act of eating.

When there is nothing left, I no longer feel comfort. What I feel is guilt and uncontrollable self-loathing, and oftentimes, I find something else to eat, to soothe those feelings and, strangely, to punish myself, to make myself feel sicker so that the next time, I might remember how low I feel when I overindulge. I never remember.

I know that hunger is in the mind and the body and the heart and the soul.

I found the discipline to have an eating disorder.

I was free, in a prison of my own making.

I wanted to make him angrier so that he could punish me and I could stop punishing myself.

That’s a powerful thing, knowing you can reveal yourself to someone. It made me want to be a better person.

The word “heartburn” is rather misleading. It has nothing to do with the heart. Or it has everything to do with the heart, only not the way you might think.

Anytime I enter a room where I might be expected to sit, I am overcome by anxiety.

Even the happiest moments of my life are overshadowed by my body and how it doesn’t fit anywhere.

space. I am miserable. I try, sometimes, to pretend I am not, but that, like most everything else in my life, is exhausting.

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Or that is what it feels like because I am so self-conscious about everything related to my body.

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eating. It did not occur to me that to cook for myself was to care for myself or that I was allowed to care for myself amidst the ruin I had let myself become.

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She teaches me about being at ease in my body. From all appearances, she is entirely at ease with herself. She is ambitious and knows she is excellent at what she does and never apologizes for it. She teaches me that a woman can be plump and pleasant and absolutely in love with food.

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What has fascinated me about cooking, and coming to it in the middle of my life, is how it’s actually a really good endeavor for a control freak. There are rules, and to succeed, at least in the early going, those rules need to be followed. I am good at following rules when I choose to.

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Cooking reminds me that I am capable of taking care of myself and worthy of taking care of and nourishing myself.

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