My Personal Experience of Hunger
by Anonymous

In my life I have been so far from ever being hungry, that I could court hunger with a bouquet of red roses. There was a time I could go weeks with no more than lemon water and a few dozen incidental calories. Though my mind went dizzy and my very bones were exhausted, my fingers would delight in playing upon the ripples of my collarbone, hip bones, and ribs. I was almighty; I was the master of my own flesh. Hunger was a cat I teased with a string as long as the horizon -- he was a million miles away and I never feared him. Even as I dreamed of reedy ballerinas and skulls which crumbled into sand, hunger was a game I played.

The rest of the girls ate, accusing me of hunger with their imploring eyes, while I tried to keep a poker face. But I loved it when they offered me food; I wanted them to beg me to take it. I wasn't hungry, I told them, or my stomach hurt, or I had eaten alone. Sometimes out of desperation to explain myself I would give all three excuses at once; my lies were ludicrous in their clarity. It didn't matter that they didn't believe me -- I wanted them to worry. They were getting fatter while I was purifying; let them beg me but I wouldn't take that first bite.

Sometimes I really tried to convince my friends that I was eating. I would feel guilty about making them worry, or grow tired of their nagging, or begin to fear that they would tell my parents. Once or twice my love for those who cared about me even drove me to abandon my courtship of hunger, or some inner strength deeper than resistance made me eat. But whether I ate or not, hunger was a world away. At any moment I could reach out and take a chocolate from the table. That was the challenge, the danger, the thrill in my extreme sport. God forgive me. I have never known hunger.

This writing was submitted by an anonymous Fairhaven student.