"Hunger" - A Grim Truth

                I think if you can’t be honest with yourself, you might as well shut up and sit in silence. Honesty is a key role in society and once we as individual decide to be honest to ourselves it makes it that much easier opening up with others around us. I was drawn to the story “Hunger”  by  Anne Lamott on page 221 in Dreams & Inward Journeys.

            It began, “This is a story of how, at the age of thirty-three, I learned to feed myself. To begin with, here’s what I did until then: I ate, starved, binged, purged, grew fat, grew thin, grew fat, grew thin, binged, purged, dieted, was good, was bad, grew fat, grew thin, grew thinner.”

            Just in that opening passage, I was able to identify with Lamott’s raw honesty that she shared with the reader. I don’t want to be all dramatic; but I used to struggle with bulimia and I feel comfortable talking about it know because it’s part of my past and there are things in everyone’s past that we aren’t too proud of. The first time I read this story, (for those of you who read it) know that this story wasn’t so serious and grim. That’s what I loved about it. She made the subject of an eating disorder funny from her perspective. Usually when you think of something like that, you would think of “Intervention” or who knows what; but the way she described her relationship with food was great.

            There came a point in the story where she sought help for herself and honestly from my own experience the only person who can stop it all is you. Yeah, you can have friends and family concerned and begging you to stop but nothing will be resolved unless you want to stop it all and change for the better. Personally, I used to think that if I looked a certain way and was a certain size then more people would like me. I thought who cares how I did it, I wanted fast results and would do whatever it takes. It’s almost as if when you’re in this mindset you feel invincible. I felt unstoppable, until I realized all the side effects and I began to get so nervous. Right now I feel like I’ve just opened up to this deep level in my life. Anyways, now I know that what I did was stupid and even though I can’t take it back, I’ve learned that I shouldn’t be so focused on just the appearance of it all, but also on my health. Because that’s what counts above all.