Hungry

I was always told that I have no idea what real hunger means.

As a kid ,I was often forced to eat things, and I was surrounded with so much guilt because of it.

“You should be glad that you have food on your table “

“There are so many hungry kids in Africa and you are going to complain to me , that you don’t like the food or what is even worst, you ain’t going to empty the plate ??!?!?!?!?”

Followed with :

“You are ungrateful “

” You don’t love me “

“You are spoiled “

“You are horrible “

“It’s an insult for me, that you didn’t make your plate empty “

Most of the people who cooked when I was young were convinced that they are the best cooks ever. They were not bothered by cooking, and in their mind , I should be grateful that we have food at all ,since not everybody is so fortunate. This was their mantra.

My mom didn’t cook well at all. It was always the same food. She was never bothered. There was no real order in the kitchen. For example ,breakfast was only there on Sundays ,since my dad was not working on that day . The rest of the days were without breakfast. We did have sandwiches made for school, but it was more so others will not think , that my mother doesn’t take a good care for us.

My dad was into everything meat . Not the best example either ,but I must say It did change after he suffered from heart attack.

I often ate at my grandma’s. Mother of my mother. She was absolutely the worst.

She was making food that I didn’t always like. One time ,she made a soup ,that was simply horrible ,and I ended up vomiting it back on the plate. She forced me then to eat what I had vomited. I will never forget this and how it made me feel. She was so offended. I was staying at her house for about a week at that time, and she didn’t speak to me for several days. I was 5. In the end I was forced to apologize to her ,so she would speak to me again.

After all ,how did I dare not like her cooking???!!!

Since then I strongly believed that if it will ever happen next time, also with others – I can expect the same treatment .

Then came body shaming , food shaming ,bullying & even more confusion.

“Do you realized how many calories this has ??! ”

“Are you sure you are going to eat this ? “

“Why aren’t you as skinny as your cousin ?”

“Nobody will ever love you if you going to be fat “

The point was at that time -I was not fat. I was a not super skinny , but I was not as fat as I was made to believe. I was constantly compared with my cousin . Her body was nothing like mine . But this didn’t matter .The numbers matter . We were the same age ,so it was easy to say what our perfect weight should be . I always had kilo or two more than her ,and therefore -I was fat. Period.

I was about 5/6 years old then .That is also when my binge eating started.

The title of this post is “Hungry” Why ?

Because I’m very uncomfortable with this word. I’m hungry now , and just about to get some lunch. I decided to write something here to not feel so guilty about feeling this way.

My mind keeps on telling me stuff like -they will see you eating again ,they will judge you etc etc . So actually this post should help me to just pull myself together and eat my lunch like a normal human being without feeling bad about it. If I skip this meal ,I will binge later and I really don’t want that.