Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

by Roxane Gay

What I know and what I feel are two very different things.

We have a shared history and yet we do not. In many ways, that’s the best means of describing my relationship with my family, and with nearly everyone in my life. There is the great life we share and the more difficult parts of my life we do not, that they know little about. There is no rhyme or reason to what I can and cannot remember. It’s also hard to explain this absence of memory because there are moments from my childhood I remember like they were yesterday.

I want to be able to hold the why in my hands, to dissect it or tear it apart or burn it and read the ashes even though I am afraid of what I will do with what I see there.

I am stronger than I am broken.

Those affirmations are rarely about genuine encouragement or kindness. They are an expression of the fear of unruly bodies. They are a misguided attempt to reward the behavior of a “good fat person,” who is, in their minds, trying to lose weight rather than simply engaging in healthful behavior.

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.

This is to say, I know what it means to hunger without being hungry. My father believes hunger is in the mind. I know differently. I know that hunger is in the mind and the body and the heart and the soul.

I get angry because I no longer want to feel his hands on my desires. I worry that I always will.

am not cold. I wasn’t ever cold. My warmth was hidden far away from anything that could bring hurt because I knew I didn’t have the inner scaffolding to endure any more hurt in those protected places.

Years ago, I told myself that one day I would stop feeling this quiet but abiding rage about the things I have been through at the hands of others. I would wake up and there would be no more flashbacks. I wouldn’t wake up and think about my histories of violence. I wouldn’t smell the yeasty aroma of beer and for a second, for several minutes, for hours, forget where I was. And on and on and on. That day never came, or it hasn’t come, and I am no longer waiting for it.

am as healed as I am ever going to be. I have accepted that I will never be the girl I could have been if, if, if. I am still haunted. I still have flashbacks that are triggered by the most unexpected things.