“It never really goes away, the longing for the life not lived, because isn’t that part of how we come to know ourselves too? Through what we lack as much as what we have, all we dream but do not hold. Some desires have no resolution.”
[…] what if I were to devour them? Bone and brain and bezoar, the last swallowed whole and unbroken. Would their cells, once edited into nutrients, then parasitize mine? Colonize and civilize the crenellations of my brain, develop into a ghost, a disparate consciousness. If I could answer this with any certainty, I’d consume them in a heartbeat, preserve them in every chapter of my body. I’d do anything but watch them die. Even if payment for their longevity isn’t shared tenancy of this body, but complete monopoly. Better I be reduced to miscreant daydreams of the ocean than be alive without them. Whatever it takes. Anything. Anything, so long as they stay with me.
女 (woman, feminine): I see a curved standstill / a breath being held in /
It is tiring to be a woman who loves to eat in a society where hunger is something not to be satisfied but controlled. Where a long history of female hunger is associated with shame and madness. The body must be punished for every misstep; for every “indulgence” the balance of control must be restored. To enjoy food as a young woman, to opt out every day from the guilt expected of me, is a radical act, of love. My body often feels like it’s neither here nor there. Too much like this, not enough like that. But however it looks, my body allows me to feel hunger.
—Nina Mingya Powles, Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai
“The freedom to choose, in other words, means the freedom to make mistakes, to come face-to-face with your own flaws and limitations and fears and secrets, to live with the terrible uncertainty that necessarily attends the construction of a self.”
Caroline Knapp, Appetites: Why Women Want
Add Cake, Subtract Self-Esteem: Anxiety and the Mathematics of Desire