(49) Unseen Hunger

The sky overhead is a lifeless dull gray, only small patches of which are not covered by threatening clouds. Naked trees reach towards this mournful display, stripped of their greenery, their pride scattered in colorful piles across the yard. It is cold outside, the kind of frigid air that causes you to gasp in astonishment at its ferocity, slipping through the tiny openings of your knit sweater so that suddenly you’re shivering like a helpless child on the street. It’s the type of climate that causes your eyes to water involuntarily and your hair to be alive with static cling, even though you lather in conditioner. Sometimes only a scalding fountain of water issuing from the showerhead in your bathroom can halt the chills, causing you to sit desperately in the bottom of the tub, curled up in a small ball as additional puddles form from droplets pouring down your eyelids, nose, and limp strands of hair. It seems that being entirely warm is impossible. When you wake up in the morning it is pure torture to leave your bed and to return to where you can speak and see your breath curl towards the atmosphere, and where your fingers become blue and dry. I can feel my ears already turning pink as I rub my arms fiercely for warmth.
“Cold, Daria?” Patsy laughs, circulating the arms of her Nantucket sweatshirt as she watches me.

“Just a little.” I admit, shivering as I bend town to touch the cold cement by my sneakers.

“You’ll warm up after we start sprinting.” Patsy replies. Then what is to me to be an almost unattainable burst of energy, she dashes down the hill of my driveway. I continue stretching, hardly concerned with catching up to her as I grasp both of my ankles, watching her run past my house, a bolt of lightning burning through nearby driveways and mailboxes. I smile to myself, her enthusiasm and motivation for such a sport undoubtedly well above my own. Running together though has always been Patsy’s and my favorite thing to do together. Ever since she moved down the road from me a couple of years ago, we had often taken a long jog together after school. It is our venting time. We can discuss family issues, boy problems, and school events. Then we usually will run hard and magically they will float away like the leaves brushing across the road. Sprinting down our favorite route is a way to focus but at the same time not focus. My mind always becomes clearer after running my brains out. From the sound of my steady breathing and my feet pounding the pavement I can sort out any problem if I need to, or forget the frustrating trials of everyday life. Patsy puffing along side me sometimes makes all the difference.

After reaching her quick pace, we start our jog in silence, both of our minds elsewhere, than where we are fighting to inhale here on Pine Street. Eventually I break the silence, the absence of conversation making it harder to complete each step. “How come you… weren’t in fifth period today?” I huff, clenching my fists where they hang tensely at my sides.

She stares ahead of her at the open road, her blonde pony tail banging gently against her back in syncopation with the movements of her body. I glance at her, waiting for a response.

“I had…an appointment.” She replies softly, holding her gaze in front of her. My brows furrow immediately at such a terse explanation. Usually Patsy unleashes forbidden dragons of dark secrets and thoughts while scurrying next to me. I wait a few moments, allowing her to collect her thoughts before she lets them tumble out of her mouth, but she continues to restrain any further information.

“A doctor’s appointment?” I prod as we turn onto a side street. It pains me that she is being so vague but more silence continues.

“No.” She murmurs, coughing and then increasing her speed. “If you must know, it was an appointment with a nutritionist.” I glance down at the road at the dust and pebbles that I am trampling, hurt a little at these biting sentences that are being thrown my way, and taken aback by the explanation. I turn my head towards the house we’re passing, the front lawn completely vacant, not even a dog willing to bare this merciful cold to bark at our passing.

“Look, Daria, I’m sorry. It’s just that this is all new to me and my mother is making it all incredibly difficult to deal with.

“What exactly, Pats?” I ask gently.

“They think I’m anorexic!” She shouts carelessly, no longer willing to endure the pain alone. “They say I’m too skinny, I don’t eat enough.” We stop now, clutching our stomachs, the original purpose of running entirely trivial now. I watch her, alarmed but for the first time noticing how thin her arms look, how tiny her wrists appear. How could this have not been apparent to me sooner? Am I that naive? One of my best friends is destroying her health and before now I haven’t had any inclination.

“I guess they are right though, I am not at the average weight for my height. Before these past few weeks I didn’t even know what I was doing, I definitely was not starving myself on purpose. Daria, it’s the girls I eat lunch with. My psychologist says that their choices of unhealthy eating habits have affected mine unconsciously. Daria, half of the girls in our school aren’t eating properly during lunch period, especially the ones that I eat with. I guess after watching them eat less and less, I began to follow their examples.” Patsy continues, explaining things that I never gave a second thought to.

My eyes squint with concentration as I think back to a day when I had a substitute in physics during lunch and ate with Patsy’s lunch bunch, a group of tall, slim figures, some with gaunt-like faces, none of them what I would consider overweight. Looking at Patsy I begin to see it, behind the loud murmurs of laughter and conversation of the cafeteria. The apples clutched with desperation that have been famously said to be a fruit with calories that can be burned with ease, the bottles of water brought back into mouths instead of sandwiches, the light n’ fit yogurt, and fruit salads. That day as I had stepped over backpacks to the table where they all had sat, I was almost sure a gasp would be let out that the container I innocently held in my hand was not fat free! The horror! Though they refuse to bring any food of substance to the table, when a girl appearing full and satisfied holds up a leftover bag of anything, several greedy and frantic hands snatch for the treasure, silver bracelets banging together in their haste. Grapes are a sacred commodity.

“Gosh, you’re right.” My eyes widen with new understanding. I was so oblivious to all of this. “Patsy, why didn’t you tell me? I would have been there for you, you know that.” I wrap my arms around her in love, embracing her in friendship and concern then pull away.

“I do, but it wasn’t something I wanted to admit to. I’m fine though, really. I now have a new eating plan where I write down everything I eat and I have to make sure everything is balanced. I’m just glad now that I realize what danger I was in that I have been able to fix it. Unfortunately most of those girls aren’t so lucky.”

“What can we do?” I ask, sitting down on the frozen curb.

“I guess just make sure they don’t influence our decisions.” She pulls me up with a smile. Then we’re off again, heading back towards home, the sun setting behind us, our bodies making shadows dancing on the pavement. We finish our run, I say a quick goodbye to Patsy at the mouth of her driveway and then walk slowly home. Traipsing immediately upstairs, I collapse on my bed, kicking off my dirty sneakers and staring up at my ceiling. It’s easy to see how this happens. Sickly-thin models on the covers of magazines, half the stars in shows like “Ally McBeal”, “Friends”, “Dawson’s Creek” are all thin, perhaps dangerously so. There is such an emphasis on performance and perfection in society that it seems that weight is just another platform for competition. For girls like Patsy and so many others, the real hunger they feel perhaps is far deeper. Beneath their seemingly perfect exteriors is a real starvation for love, for acceptance and for balance in a world that is sometimes famine-stricken for these precious nutrients. Believe me, my own family is far from perfect, but I have never in my life felt the need to be anyone other than myself. I think that’s because my parents have stressed the importance of being true to myself and to my ideals. Maybe other parents should try that as well as making the effort to tell their child that they love them. With an extra serving of that, maybe this whole unfortunate charade would end, maybe this would finally satisfy this unseen hunger.