Hunger.

How do you write when you're not living? The hunger that comes from lack and the hunger that comes from life.

The notes app on my phone is full of words. My notebooks are full, I write and write. Constantly. On a train. In my bed. While I walk. I love seeing the ink of my pen seep into the paper. Watch it make letters from shapes as if by magic, as if it’s not me guiding the pen. Love seeing the ink dry while I am already onto the next word. I love hearing a song somewhere, or a conversation or observing an interaction and feeling that spark that makes me grab my phone and type words into my notes. My throat is full of words. So many many words. My body is full of words. I am overwhelmed, congested with words and unable to force them into sense. My heart is full and my pages are full but do they make sense to anyone but me? I cannot communicate it, I cannot write it, because I feel like I am not living.

How do you write when you’re not living?

I try to keep it down. Try to tame it and tell it that we are ok. That we are full. That we are fed. It doesn’t always hear me: the yearning, the hunger.

My hunger stirs its head when I walk through city streets and look into people’s faces. Thousands of different faces reminding me of how many stories exist outside of mine. Overwhelming me with the desire to know more. Overwhelming me with the feeling of insignificance, urgency and importance all at once. When friends send me postcards from far away places, I feel the hunger in my belly. When people talk about their plans, their futures, my hunger roars in agony. My hunger wants a future. But my mind can’t see one. A few weeks ago I met someone who walked with me through the night. Kissed me through the night. Held me through the night. That night woke up a hunger too. A yearning for more than what is. Something I often push away and excuse as my monkey brain. The smell of fresh laundry makes me hungry. So does hearing my name from the mouth of someone I love. When I hear a banjo, I feel hungry. Or a Cello or a Violin. It stirs a desire in me. A calling from somewhere. Hearing someone talk in a language I don’t know. The specific scent of a warm evening, the scent that reminds me of the Mediterranean, but can sometimes be found in other places too, at dusk, when it’s quiet. If you know it, you know the hunger it stirs. I have so much hunger. The hunger in my belly reflects the one in my heart. She is always hungry. Never satisfied. Hungry for life.

I tell myself that I am living. I know I am living. There is so much life in my days. I create joy out of nothing. I find magic where others see nothing. My compass for beauty is remarkable and going for a walk with me means walking slowly. It means catching people’s eyes, stopping to marvel at raindrops on a leaf that look like tiny mirrors, saying hello to every animal that crosses my path, and noticing the light. Oh the light. Walking with me means slowing down to see the light. I will teach you to see magic in the light. I watch little rivers on windows and I love listening to the rain from bed. I send my friends good morning messages and I share food with people I love almost daily. I have people who cry with me and laugh with me. We dream together and grief together. I do work that I am proud of, work that is impactful, even when it breaks my heart or barely pays. I am brave. And I align my actions with the highest, current expression of my truth. My life is full. Full. Full. Full. And yet. There is a constant yearning under the surface that never quiets. A desire for something bigger. Forgive me, birds and leaves and light, you are extraordinarily stunning. And (not but) I also need more. I want more.

I find magic everywhere but I want magic to find me. I see love everywhere but I want love to see me. I feel like I am doing all the work but I don’t feel seen by love. Feel forgotten by magic.

I yearn for a stranger in a new city. I am hungry for a life changing email. For a serendipitous encounter. I yearn for morning kisses on my shoulder, soft as butterflies. I yearn to get lost in streets I have never seen before. I yearn for a winning ticket, a surprise upgrade. I am hungry for scents I have never smelled and flavours that are new to my senses. I am hungry for adventures and I am also hungry for safety. I am hungry for roots that nourish my soul and body equally. I am hungry for a different world, where people are valued over profit. I am hungry for justice and freedom from oppressive systems. I am hungry for ease, for a collective exhale. A scream lives in my throat, it slips out sometimes, half formed and frustrated. It makes the cats look at me with wide eyes. When my friend hears that sound, they just say “I know.” I am hungry for friendships that don’t disappear into romance. I am hungry for community that feels like family, for sofas to not be empty, but filled with bodies, filled with presence. I am hungry for feeling safe when I am the worst human in the world, when I am angry, jealous and sad and disgusting. I am hungry to be seen, known and loved at my worst.
I am hungry for having my friends and lover sit together in the same room, for breaking bread and sharing laughter and crying into our pillows knowing we are held.
I am so hungry for this poison that runs through our society, to end. I am hungry for the illusive feeling of ‘home’, hungry to finally belong in a place and with a people.
I am hungry for more, more, more, more. I am hungry to see the foolish, idealistic version of the world I desire come to life. I am hungry for miracles to find me. I am so hungry. I am hungry for life. I am hungry for life to start feeling …differently.

How do you write when you feel life and the world are stuck in those cogs and seemingly continue with no hesitation whatsoever? With no second thoughts, without integrity and qualms? How do you make peace with your hunger, when you know it is partly generated by an unhealthy system and sustained by exploitation of others?


I am embarrassed to admit that I am greedy. That I want more life. I am embarrassed that Capitalism is the reason for a lot of my hunger. I hate that. If I did not know about all the options, I wouldn’t hunger for them. I am embarrassed to talk about my hunger. Ashamed of how ungrateful it will make me sound. Ashamed of having a lot, of being safe and still be hungry all the time. When there are millions with so much less than me and so much more real hunger. I am embarrassed that hunger can make a fool of me that way.
I am scared to miss the life I have because I am hungry for the life I don’t have.

A friend told me that for them, desire is value-neutral. And then I realised why it wasn’t the same for me. Why my relationship to it is so complicated.

I was taught not to be hungry. Raised on the notion that wanting is bad. Stop eating, you’ll get fat. You’re too big. Eat less. Big girls don’t get love. Eating more makes you ugly. Wanting more makes you a bad person. Greed is a sin. What you have is enough. god is all you need. god will fill your void. You don’t need more than what he gives you.
But he was never enough. I was just suppressing how hungry I was. Lying to myself. Once again, ‘faith’ teaches us so well to do that.
Of course I am always left hungry when I was taught that starving is noble. Of course I am never satisfied when I was taught to accept less than I even needed. Of course there was always going to be a gap.
I want to heal my hunger, the one that comes from lack. From suppression. I want to tell that child she is alright now. And at the same time I also want to honour my want. The one that keeps me alive.

Some birds know hunger well. They move their whole lives. Fly higher and further. Exploring and never settling in one place. The leaves know what it is to be content. To go through the cycles of life, always repeating the same. Death and rebirth. Grounded firmly in their roots, accepting their life is a cycle.

Both are nature. Both are true. Maybe it is ok for me to be both too.