What Hungers Do

Hunger does not always arrive with noise.

Sometimes it comes dressed as discipline.

Sometimes as patience.

Sometimes as a tightness in the chest that refuses to loosen no

matter how much water you drink.

She learned this slowly.

At first, hunger meant the obvious things.

The hollow sound her stomach made in the early hours before

the sun reached the kitchen window.

The way her hands shook when she stood too

long without eating.

These were simple hungers.

They announced themselves.

They could be answered.

Later, hunger became quieter.

It settled into her days like dust, invisible until it gathered

enough weight to be noticed.

It appeared in the pauses between tasks, in the way she lingered

too long at the sink after washing a single cup.

It lived in the half-finished thoughts she abandoned before they

could fully form.

She did not call it hunger then.

She called it tiredness.

Responsibility.

Adulthood.

It was easier that way.

In the mornings, she moved through the house with practiced

efficiency.

Water boiling.

Windows opened.

Shoes aligned by the door.

She fed others before feeding herself, not out of sacrifice, but

habit.

Hunger, she had learned, was easier to manage when it

belonged to someone else.

When she finally ate, it was often standing.

A piece of fruit swallowed without noticing its sweetness.

A handful of nuts taken as an afterthought.

Enough to continue.

Never enough to arrive.

She told herself she preferred it this way.

There were days she felt almost proud of her restraint.

The way she could delay, ignore, override.

Hunger, after all, was a kind of desire, and desire was unruly.

It asked questions she did not have time to answer.

She had learned early that wanting too much made people

uncomfortable.

Wanting too clearly invited correction. So she

learned to want quietly, to want indirectly, to disguise longing as

practicality.

But hunger is patient. It waits.

It waited with her in the quiet afternoons when the house

softened into stillness. When the world outside slowed and

there was no one

left to tend to.

It waited in her chest, not aching, not sharp, just present.

A reminder that something had been postponed for too

long.

Sometimes it surfaced as irritation she could not place. A

shortness in her responses.

A heaviness that settled over ordinary moments.

Other times it appeared as nostalgia for things she could not

name, memories without clear images, only feeling.

One afternoon, she found herself standing in front of the

cupboard without knowing why. She opened it, stared, closed it

again.

Nothing there could answer what she was looking for. She knew

this.

Still, she lingered.

The hunger she carried did not want food.

It wanted acknowledgment.

She sat at the table and rested her palms against the wood. The

surface was cool, grounding. She closed her eyes, not in prayer,

but in listening.

This was something she had forgotten how to do, sit without

filling the space immediately.

The hunger rose then, unmistakable.

It was not the hunger of deprivation. It was the hunger of having

given too much shape to other people’s needs and not enough

space to her own.

The hunger of holding herself together so carefully that nothing

real could escape.

She breathed.

The hunger did not disappear.

It softened, the way a held breath does when finally released.

She thought of all the times she had mistaken control for peace.

Of how easily discipline could become denial when left

unquestioned.

Of how hunger, ignored long enough, did not vanish, it changed

its form.

She remembered moments she had brushed aside.

Ideas abandoned before they could embarrass her.

Feelings minimized before they could demand action.

How often she had told herself, later, when there was

more time, when things were easier.

Later had become a habit.

That evening, she cooked slowly.

Not to nourish, but to remember.

She sliced vegetables with attention, listening to the sound the

knife made against the board.

She noticed the colors, the steam, the way heat altered texture.

She did not rush. There was no one waiting, no standard to

meet.

When she ate, she sat down. She tasted.

The hunger responded, not by disappearing, but by becoming

clearer.

It was not asking to be silenced.

It was asking to be met honestly.

Later, when the dishes were done and the day had loosened its

grip, she stepped outside.

The air was cool, generous. She stood

still, letting the evening settle around her.

Hunger remained, but it no longer felt like an accusation.

It felt like an invitation.

She realized then that hunger was not her enemy.

It had never been. It was a signal, not of lack, but of life still

moving beneath the surface.

A quiet insistence that something within her

wanted to be lived more fully.

Not consumed. Not conquered. Listened to.

She did not promise herself change.

She did not outline a plan.

Hunger had taught her that urgency often belonged to fear.

Instead, she stayed where she was.

She breathed. She let the moment be sufficient.

Some hungers could not be fed in a single sitting.

Some were not meant to be satisfied quickly.

Some existed to keep us honest, to remind us that presence is

not the absence of desire,

but the willingness to sit with it.

She realized how long she had treated hunger as something to

be managed rather than understood.

How often she had measured her days

by productivity instead of presence.

The world rewarded endurance, after all.

It praised those who could keep going without complaint,

without pause.

But hunger had never asked for praise.

It asked for honesty.

She wondered how many people carried the same quiet ache,

mistaking it for weakness or failure.

How many had learned, as she had, to postpone themselves

indefinitely.

Hunger, she understood now, was not a flaw in her discipline.

It was evidence of something alive, something still responsive

beneath routine and expectation.

To feel hunger meant she had not gone numb.

And that, she decided, mattered.

That night, she slept deeply.

Not because the hunger was gone,

but because it had finally been heard.

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