Full Of Something

TW: eating disorders

Here is an experiment: place something you love to eat in front of you when you’re hungry, and try to eat ‘just enough’ so that you’re full and satisfied. This feels like an impossible pursuit. I am always in want of more; one more bite, one more taste, one more drink, one more touch. The Western entitlement of pleasure means that we all like to gorge on it – think how language like ‘binging’ has trickled into how we consume media – and in some ways, it’s as if ‘pleasure’ has become disconnected with the emotion it elicits (commonly joy or happiness). I suppose this feels like the natural filtering down of the West’s approach to life: more than enough. More is the motto of capitalism, after all; and it’s the high we’re all chasing. A family-size packet of crisps bought less than two hours ago sits empty in front of me. I am alone and full and I’m unsure how I feel about it.

I do not like feeling full. I can’t quite tell if this is what triggered a pattern of disordered eating in my early twenties – emptying myself out in hopes of a reset, a rebirth of sorts – or a symptom of it. Something I’d barely noticed when I was younger had suddenly become some visceral, present, and all-consuming as I creeped out of teendom and flung myself off the ledge into adulthood. Unpacking it all now, almost a decade on since I began to obsess over everything that went into my body, I can see how this shift coincided with the transition of independence and responsibility.

It struck me as so obvious that I began to think more about the binary of ‘full’ and ‘emptiness’ as it related to to my body a lot more when I moved out of catered halls and into my first shared house. I was suddenly accountable for myself. I earned money at a part-time job. I went grocery shopping for myself. I was responsible for what I ate, how I cooked and how I looked. It was also a time in my life where I started to understand what it meant to be observed. To be noticed. To be look upon, whether with admiration or disgust, either from other or more likely, myself. This was the era before Instagram took hold of our attentions and our screens. Where digital cameras adorned the wrist of every girl in the club, and Facebook albums were published unfiltered the next day for everyone to see, to tag, to share.

I worked in an Urban Outfitters alongside attending lectures and seminars, reading eleven texts a week and writing essays on critical theory and Renaissance comedies. I’d returned from a two month trip a smaller person. As I reintegrated into campus life, I noticed the observations turning more complimentary. I was desperate to keep it up. I existed on bran flakes three times a day and turned to bad habits that I wouldn’t shake for many more years when eating meals around a table of housemates and friends.

I didn’t think about it. I didn’t think about it for years, and it’s only now, with nearly a decade of perspective, of highs and lows, of full moments and empty ones too, that I’ve reckoned with the self-destructive behaviour that I leaned into.

I’ve been thinking about this more in my thirties, because I’d like to think I’ve removed myself from these patterns (although I think it’s fair to say that disordered eating never truly goes away; it’s a constant challenge, an active pursuit of telling yourself that your body is a body and not something to be manipulated for the sake of misguided beauty standards). But also because I am trying out a new relationship with fullness. One that doesn’t feel hemmed in but ebbs and flows depending on my mood.

I do not like to define how I eat as ‘intuitive’ or ‘clean’ or ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’. These are unnecessary binaries. I like the idea of connecting eating with pleasure, because pleasure itself is not an emotion. It’s a state of being. And you can find pleasure in so many things. In the ripple of a pasta shape or the oily spots in a stock. In the texture of a wild mushroom or the creaminess of a sauce. The way food and fullness bisect is not just in the act of eating – pleasure is the conduit that is felt and filled up by all of the senses. My eyes become wide when I see an ingredient that sparks an idea. The sound of fats colliding with heat makes my ears throb with excitement. Smells that make your tastebuds swell. The taste of something that begins tart then turns into salt and ends sweet. All of these make me feel full. Full of something great.

There are days when my eyes are so full that they deceive my senses and I end up horizontal on the sofa. A Sri Lankan curry with spicy dried sprats and fried curry leaves and saffron rice and monkfish drowning in coconut milk did the trick last night. Often I wonder if that fullness will ever fade. And it does, but when you don’t punish yourself for it, it simply transfers from a full stomach to a full heart. And then you want to do it all over again.