Dear Appetite,
A creative non fiction piece highlighting the implications of recovery from unexpected health and life events.
I’ve come home to you every single day for the past eighteen years with desire and anticipation. So many years have flown by without much of a backward glance. I had never really considered life without you because how could I? When you had always been a part of my life? I must have taken that desire for you for granted. Too much in fact that perhaps I didn’t give it much thought. Always looking forward to our time but never reflecting back on how privileged I was to have you or more importantly, that ambition to keep you. I never had to work hard to be filled up with your warmth.
Something changed that year when I got out of the hospital. It was my fifth battle and the tiredness overcame more than my limbs; it obliterated my willingness to fight. I felt numb and terrified. Broken and ashamed. Nothing like who I was, who I truly wanted to be. And by the time I realized you had gone, it was too late. It was our nineteenth year…going on twenty. But I must have been too preoccupied with my own pain to give you any effort. I should have known better. I knew it was going to be so damn difficult this time around but I didn’t expect to lose the best parts of myself. You.
I was searching, exploring, I called it, but I could never find. It was then I realized that I needed you the most in those moments but you never came. So I started looking for you and putting in the effort. It’s funny because the harder I tried, it became apparent to me that it didn’t matter much anymore. I could still live and I could breathe. And that was enough. I was enough.
All that time, there was a part of the old me that still remained. It was like a duality of beings wrecking havoc across my mind, body, and soul. I still looked the same but somehow, I couldn’t recognize myself any longer. I became this incorrigible being. Clothes were baggier and hung a lot looser on my hips. My wristwatch was now on the tightest latch. I was slowly fading. I felt it in my faint breaths and spelled out clear as day, I had no longer any desire for you. I couldn’t grasp that longing for you again. And that hurt more than you could ever know.
How can you truly let something go when you never had the choice to do so? Because I couldn’t remember not caring… I don’t remember ever making the conscious decision of pushing you out. I didn’t see the signs that you were dissipating and that your time was fleeting. I want to long you again not because I want to but because I need to. Come back, please. I’m trying.
— -
It must have been love that moment I saw you again. On the corner of Rue Bonaparte. A fleeting glance but I remember it all too well. The chance encounter of magical beginnings where I was able to get a whiff of your wonderful smell. The smell of meticulous care, belonging, home. Time is never finite with you, I recognize that now. That day, I began again. It seemed as I couldn’t recall the days of my journey with you that had come to a halt. It was simply bliss. Coming to fall back in love with you in Paris. It wasn’t about the City of Light or Love, it was the city of mystical coincidences that brought me back to you. You back to me.
It was our twenty first year because I had never stopped counting. Even the moments when I felt like I was at rock bottom, I couldn’t help but hold onto the hope that you would come back. I had faith that things would work out because a part of me said it would.
I recognize you now for more than a necessity or an idea but for the parts of you that bring life to me. I recognize that longing for the moments that we spend together as integral to my livelihood and my being. You breathe life and love into me. You give me the capacity to be happy and the energy to love others. I don’t need to doubt how you complete me because you always do.
As I close the cookbook and set it beside the stove, I inhale the scent of beef stew with just the right mix of tomatoes, potatoes, chickpeas, carrots, and beef. My heart is full with gratitude as I come to the dawning realization that I can crave you again. I’ve come home. I’ll never take you for granted again. I bring the wooden spoon to my lips.
