I couldn’t think how to articulate that food stopped being food when you didn’t have it, that it swelled and bloated as you shrank. It became the way you ticked off the hours, how you judged a good day from a bad one, something you stored when you had it and mourned when you didn’t. I couldn’t think how to explain the hunger, and I wasn’t sure there was any point in trying. You couldn’t understand hunger like that unless you had felt it. I wanted to tell her how it had shaped me, made me, because it had been huge and I had been tiny and it had always been there, a gnawing, nagging constant.
I couldn’t think how to articulate that food stopped being food when you didn’t have it, that it swelled and bloated as you shrank. It became the way you ticked off the hours, how you judged a good day from a bad one, something you stored when you had it and mourned when you didn’t. I couldn’t think how to explain the hunger, and I wasn’t sure there was any point in trying. You couldn’t understand hunger like that unless you had felt it. I wanted to tell her how it had shaped me, made me, because it had been huge and I had been tiny and it had always been there, a gnawing, nagging constant.
