"Now I Know How You Feel."

Over the years, she had seen my ability to eat "normally" come and go.

"Now I know how you feel."

My daughter said these words to me years ago, after a newfound mouth of braces kept her constrained to soft bites and blended morsels. I wrote this then (I keep a lot of the ink I don’t share), but am using it now because it fit the current context in a fortuitous sort of way.

Over the years, she had seen my ability to eat "normally" come and go.

After fundoplication in 2015, I couldn't eat solid foods for multiple months, watching my sanity and strength soften along with my menu. The same goes for partial obstructions or pancreas pains.

These days, I am able to eat for weeks at a time (while supplementing with tube feeds when I have my act together), and then go days without due to biliary attacks. It takes a lot of work to keep my body digesting. A gastric pacemaker resides near my stomach and was recently re-upped in battery, gently shocking it to action. My intestines were rerouted and resurrected, after removing portions; pyloroplasty and Nissans, nuisance and on.

I am grateful for the limited ability that I do have, weeks on and off, as well as how much these devices stalled the decline. I know what it's like to not eat. Or to just have liquids. Or to hyperventilate in a store because a simple bite of something could cause pain for days.

A body needs calories to fight infection- which I am made of.

Do I eat (as much for my psychological health as physical) but risk the pain? Or do I skip, yet grow worse in other ways? I am always hungry. I am always tired. I am always bitter, to an extent... even when I know (and have lived) what worse could be. I am hungry from a vacant place deep inside, wanting to consume all the nightmares of the world and seek all the euphoria.

“Have you left the country in the last 3 weeks?” They ask before every surgery like automatons, and my youngest and I look at each other and both unanimously sign “never” in sync, while my mouth dryly says, “nope”. I was a mother. And then I was a mother. And then I was sick. And then I was also a mother. I had no means to travel… I had traumas that took our time and totality… And I had too much “too much” weighing down almost every single year that might have been filled with levity.

Every single person in my family has left the country, at least once in their life. We are a family that is so lucky, our couple overflows, even when we all fall on hard times; Scrimping, saving, but always still saving each other. Why am I bitter? How spoiled am I? I want to eat everything in small towns of forieng lands- skipping the tourist cities and just seeing something… anything… that isn’t stamped with stars, and stripes, and states to claim.

I am hungry for so much more than 4 square walls, and “work ethic” and waiting. I am starving…. Can you feel it?

“Now I know how you feel", my daughter said, way way way back when… but I, somehow, still don't. I feel on. Then I feel off. Then I repeat. I don't know what I feel about food any more... but am grateful for the meals that have made a life. I have known real hunger, financially, and I have known medical hunger, physically, and I gave known spiritual hunger, perpetually… and I have known “too much” in one totaled life, yet…

I still know so damn little.

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