Portions of Me

 

     I don't remember my first bite of food, but I do remember the first time it was used against me. 

     I was five years old, hungry enough to gnaw through drywall, and the women who called herself my stepmother slammed down a plate of something rotten. "Eat it or starve" she said. That wasn't a metaphor. I had already gone two days without eating. She stood over me, hand ready.

     That plate might as well have been a landmine. 

     I gagged.

     She smirked.

     And when I vomited, she made me eat that too. 

     So, no- this isn't a weight loss story. This isn't about willpower, or lettuce or macros. It's about how food became both my punishment and my prize. It's about how I learned, far to early, that hunger could mean danger and fullness could mean safety; or shame. 

     My body remembers things my brain doesn't. That's the crazy thing about trauma. It files memories in your muscle. In your gut. In places doctors can't scan. 

     I've been overweight, underweight, invisible and humiliated. I've been called names- cow, pig, fat bitch. 

     People have looked at my plate like it was a confession. Like they knew my sins because they saw me take seconds. 

     They didn't see the nights I hoarded granola bars in my sock drawer. Or the childhood years when the fridge was as empty as the house. Or the mornings I measured my worth by the scale, then skipped breakfast to feel in control. I've punished myself with celery. Rewarded myself with pizza. And when things got really bad, I punished myself with pizza too. 

     My dad was a fisherman, gone nine months of the year, then home like a hurricane. An alcoholic, cruel and emotionally bankrupt.

     My mom? She fled when I was five. My brother's were 3 and 18 months. Left us behind, not because she wanted to; but because staying would've killed her, and taking us would've meant losing us anyway. When I finally lived with her again, she was on husband number two, then three, then four. She partied like a teenager and praised herself like a deity. The fridge was a revolving door, full one day, empty the next. But there was always alcohol. 

     No wonder I started sneaking food. It was comfort. It was control. It was my one reliable friend. 

     At nine, a doctor put me on a diet. Told me I was too big for my age, like I was some kind of defective model. My mom nodded in agreement. She'd already been cutting my hair like a boy. Maybe it was easier to compete with a daughter if she looked nothing like one. 

     By twenty three, I had gastric bypass surgery and lost 180 pounds. 

     Gained something else: the realization that surgery can't fix the reasons you eat. The trauma? Still there. The shame? Still in stock. The urge to eat in secret? Alive and thriving. 

     I hide food now. Not because I'm greedy, but because I was trained to believe that wanting it was wrong. That I wasn't allowed to be hungry. That food was a privilege I had to earn through silence and submission. 

     I live alone. I like it that way. But it also means there's no one to witness the small rituals: the way I approach the fridge like it's a witness I'm trying to bribe, the way I feel disgusted after eating even a reasonable meal. 

     I buy clothes in the wrong size because I genuinely don't know what I look like. Body dysmorphia is a trick mirror I can't smash. 

     I don't eat in front of people when I'm in my "chubby stage". That's what I call it, like it's just another season. Spring, summer, shame. I cancel plans that involve restaurants. I avoid the eyes of servers when I order something that isn't a salad. I feel like I have to explain myself; "Oh, I didn't eat lunch " or "It's a cheat day", as if enjoying food requires a permission slip. 

     But this, this story, is not about the food. 

     It's about the little girl tied up with rope and pad locked in boxes outside for taking an apple. It's about the teenager who believed she'd be lovable if she were just ten pounds thinner. It's about the women who cant walk down the street without strangers assuming she's lazy, unhealthy or a procrastinator because her thighs touch. 

     I've carried shame like a second skin. I've mourned the body I'll never have while ignoring the body that carries me, every damn day. I've punished myself with words that would make anyone else flinch, but I felt deserved when pointed inward. 

     Portions of me were stolen. Portions of me were starved. Portions were padded with weight to protect me from more pain. 

     And now, I'm writing this; to reclaim those portions. To say that my relationship with food is complex, yes, but it's not broken. I am not broken.

     I am layered, like the meals I still love to cook. Spiced with humour, charred with history, and held together with stubborn, redheaded resilience. 

     So no, this is not about the food. It's about the emptiness no meal could fill. And what I'm nourishing now.

     Myself.