Hungry Shame

I remember the moment when being hungry made me feel ashamed. It was after the 7th time he said I ate too much.

Seven, the number of perfection. I suppose it was some kind of twisted fate that I was given to a man who thought everything and everyone around him needed to appear perfect. I could be rotting inside, organs failing, but as long as I was thin and smiling - I was perfect.

Anytime someone asked if I was hungry, I would say no. To be hungry was to be weak. Weakness didn't belong on a perfect girl, and that's what I was trying to be for him. Really, it became my own special way of keeping my sanity. My special way of attracting all the perfectly imperfect. My way of telling the world that I was okay, when they could look into my eyes and see that I was not okay at all.

That was another shame I had. No one ever looked into my hungry eyes, only my "perfect" body. My skin has always been more intriguing than my soul.

I remember the first time I told someone I loved that I was hungry, and how he didn't hesitate to get me something to eat. He was not upset. He didn't look at me any differently. I was the same person he thought I was. He didn't seem to think I was weak or imperfect. I was still his, and that is all that mattered. From that moment on, I ate. I fed my skin, I fed my soul, and I began to starve the shame that ate away at me for so long. -AshleyAnne