Am I Hungry?

Am I hungry?

It’s a shorthand my best friend and I prompt each other with when we’re trying to discern what we need or want in any given moment, or when we’re trying to encourage the other one to dig deeper into our desires. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with actual physical hunger, although it could. It’s about asking ourselves,

“What is my body telling me?” What is it that I’m actually feeling, if I can quiet the ‘should’?”

You know the ‘should’ I’m talking about. The ‘should’ of decades of expectations so heavy they’ve silenced the song of your soul. It’s the ‘should’ of my eating disorder voice that reminds me that my thoughts aren’t always to be trusted. It’s the ‘should’ of my own fear.

“How do I know what I need or want if my whole life, everyone has been telling me what I should need or want?” “How can I know what I need or want if my needs and wants were ignored and belittled as a child?”

For too long, I have been unable to hear my voice over the noise of these old wounds. I’ve worked hard to understand why I dissociated and numbed myself for so much of my life.

It feels so simple, but I am 56 years old and I’m still learning what it means to have a need, a want, and how I meet those needs and desires. What constitutes a “valid” need or want, and when do I “deserve” something? How do I even know if I need it? Must I justify my needs? And, if so, to whom? What does it feel like to want or need something with abandon, without judgment, without second-guessing? For that matter, what does it feel like to need something and to answer the body’s need for it, without the weight of shame, fear, anxiety, self-hatred, or mountains of self-criticism?

At one year old, I am screaming, “Out. Amie. Crib!” “Out. Amie. Crib!” over and over again. I stand and grip the rails of the crib, angry for someone to rescue me. To listen to me. Yet somewhere, somehow, I know I must be doing something wrong. Why do I need to shout my need? Why won’t they rescue me and release me from this pain? What is this distress if not a part of me? I am too young to understand that these feelings of discomfort are not me; they are not my fault. I am expressing myself wholly and honestly. In return, my parents offer silence, anger, and disgust with my emotions.

I am 3 years old and squatting behind the black-leather couch in the living room. A large, silver-arched lamp gracefully arcs one side of the couch; a bright and leafy potted plant, tall and strong, towers over the other. Directly in front sits our coffee table, oblong glass atop a curved wood base. So beautifully smooth in its midcentury cool modernity. When I wade through these memories of these first years of my life, it’s the furniture: the colors, the textures, the shapes—that ground me in time and place, and soften the anxiety of the memories.

Rust-colored shag carpet blankets the room, and I pee. In one little spot behind the couch, terrified, slightly emboldened, and unable to stop myself. My underpants are soaking wet. I don’t bother to pull down my pants. I squat and pee. The warm release is a harsh companion to the red-hot shame.

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I know I will be yelled at. I know I might be spanked. I remember feeling in those moments that there would be no hole deep enough to bury my humiliation. I was scared. I had already cultivated my own fear from the pearl of shame. It was the fear of expressing my needs. I could not simply tell my mother I needed to use the toilet or ask for help because I didn’t understand how to respond to my body’s needs without shame.

Whether it was being yelled at for not being fully potty-trained or for being unable to sleep through the night or for wanting comfort from the isolation of my crib—all of these seemingly mundane and typical experiences for babies and children became battlegrounds. The winner was whoever could outlast, overpower, or exhaust the other. You can imagine that even in those rare times when I “won” by exhausting my parents with an endless tantrum about going to sleep that pushed them to let me stay awake long past my bedtime, I never felt like a winner.

There is shame when it feels like every time you need something and don’t know how to get that need met, it is met with anger, it is met with violence, it is met with yelling, red faces, short words, sometimes cruelty; “I am ashamed of you”, hoisted over my father’s knee and smacked hard so it hurts. I am crying loudly. He is rage embodied. Other times, he grabs me with his big, strong hands and pulls me into his body for a tickle session. The position is confusingly similar to being spanked – I am thrown over his knees as I squirm and laugh hysterically. He is tickling me everywhere because he knows I am unbearably ticklish. And that’s what it feels like. Unbearable. Is it fun? I don’t know. How do I know what feels right to my child's body when nothing is in my control?

I didn’t know then that I was learning to take up less space in the world by silencing myself when I had a need. I didn’t know then that I would become an expert at pretending I have no needs; at ignoring what my body truly needs and wants so aggressively that I cause physical harm to myself in the process.

I am 5 years old. I am at my grandmother’s apartment in Queens with my mother. It is night, and this visit was not planned. We are fresh from having left the apartment we shared with my father and baby brother. They – my father and brother – are not with us.

I had no idea at the time, but it was the first step toward my parents’ divorce.

That night, I am standing on the bed that is the pull-out couch in my grandmother’s large studio apartment, on the ground floor in this quiet neighborhood in the dark. My mother is sitting on the other side of the bed. My back is turned. She is unpacking our bag. My grandmother is quiet, kind, and childlike. She loves me with a simple sweetness—like the pure love you feel from a pet.

I say something to my mother. I don’t remember what. Without warning, I am shocked by her hand; a strong, solid smack on my back. So powerful and painful, it silences the world. It makes everything small and insignificant, and all I can do is sink into the shock. In the most minuscule of moments, my innocence is released, like the soul at the moment of death, if you believe in such things. What remains is shame.

It’s a shame that has remained with me throughout my adult life, pumping through my veins like poison. It’s the shame about what I have done to my body when I feel completely out of control: the restriction of food, the purging, and the binge eating, the shame I feel when I am scared or sad or angry. It’s the shame I feel about having kept my eating disorder a secret for so many years, only to have it overtake my life, wedging itself between me and my children, between me and my husband at the time. It’s the shame I still feel when I struggle to articulate to those who love me and who I love what it is I need in any given moment.

It’s taken me a long time and a lot of work to understand this shame and the way it has fueled my need to dissociate. I have grasped at many and benefitted from some therapeutic modalities to learn how to feel my emotions again, and to allow them expression. For many years, I couldn’t identify what I was feeling. I teetered between utter numbness and extreme anxiety. When I did feel angry or upset, I struggled to regulate myself. Instead, I’d feel as if I were plunging into a lake of fire or drowning in my own sadness. The only thing I could seem to feel was shame. I held on tight, without truly being conscious of what I was doing, to a deep sense of wrongness in my soul. I was inherently wrong all the time.

I am living alone at the time. My adult children live across the country. I am divorced after 25 years of marriage. I knew it was time to move out of the house my ex-husband and I still co-owned together, the one we lived in as a family for twenty years. Driving home, I hold it together after a day at work spent pretending that I’m fine. No--more than pretending. Performing as a 2D self. Who me? Needs? Nah! I swing open the wooden gate I thought was too tall when we built it. But I’m 5’2”, so most things are too tall for me. A pair of stellar jays fly between the pine tree that still held the old tire swing my kids played on ten years ago and the dying birch tree I needed to find an arborist to cut down.

When I finally cross the threshold into my house, I lose it. I throw my bag down on the couch and stamp my feet. I begin bawling uncontrollably. The kind of chest-heaving sobs and angry growls that feel pure animal. I am overwhelmed with loneliness, frustration, and a desperation to feel something other than pain. But as I shake and scream, I don’t tell myself the usual stories of how awful I am for losing control. I don’t chide myself about how alone or wrong I feel. I simply allow myself to express my emotions.

There is no judgmental voice telling me I’m too much. I am not hellbent on criticizing myself into a crumpled mess. I am fully in my feelings. And as I wail, I find myself moving frenetically, arms flailing, stomping back and forth across my living room floor. I keep going because my body clearly needs this energy to flow.

I am punching the air and kicking my feet like a kickboxer in a ring, fighting for victory. My body begins to understand. This is what it’s like when emotions are allowed to breathe. With a fluidity that feels as if I’m sliding into a warm bed after a long night, I start to sway differently. There is ease and an expansion into comfort. I relax into a self-soothing I never knew was possible. I turn on music and begin to dance with myself. Slowly at first and then with more excitement.

Honestly, this memory was lost to me until I began to write this afternoon. Healing is not linear, and experiences like these can feel transformative and then as if they disappear into the ether. I have been desperate to release myself from the shame I carry. The shame of continuing to struggle with recovery. The shame of feeling like I still don’t know what I need at 56 years old. But lately I have begun to feel the pinpricks of anger as I notice that I am not getting what I need. When I pause and wonder why I am not asking for what I need or giving myself what I need: whether that’s food, support from those who love me, or compassion for myself. It’s hard work – the ongoing excavation of trauma and the decisions I make every day, sometimes many times a day, to not believe the voice of shame that keeps me stuck. To tell myself new stories. To unsoundproof the voice that answers, when I ask myself,

“Am I hungry?” with “I will give myself the space and time and love to find out exactly what I need right now.”

I remind myself that there is a path out of this pain. I tell myself over and over again, my shame is old and does not serve me. It’s time to embrace the beauty of my needs.

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