by Chinazo Echezona-Johnson

Created on: August 17, 2008

Hunger. Headache. Dizziness. Gurgling stomach. The sensation was different. The feeling was uncomfortable. I could hear the gurgling of my intestines as if they were protesting about the emptiness of my stomach. The ache in my stomach was unbearable. I opened my mouth to call out, but my throat was hoarse. My mouth was hurting, and my tongue was bitter. I could smell the foul odor from the back of my throat. My head was pounding as if somebody was using it as a drum. I tried to get up from the hard floor, but my legs were very weak. My captors made sure that I would not escape from my makeshift outside prison.

Even in the midst of hunger, pain and weakness, I couldn't help thinking about the days when I had so much to eat that I would throw out the left-over from the night before. In fact. I used to carefully choose and measure the foods to eat. I was always on a diet. When I dined out in restaurants, I had to divide my foods in fours so that I could eat the right portion. Fighting the bulge was my lifetime struggle. I struggled daily to fit the society norm of what the right body proportion should be. I had to exercise religiously to fight the battle of obesity. My best friend became the bathroom scale because I would agonize over gaining a pound over what the societal norm dictated for a 30 year old woman of 5 feet 6 inches.
Food was everywhere. Food was my foe. I couldn't eat any food without feeling guilty. Food was my sworn enemy, but it was also my confidante in times of stress. I recalled how I used the food to comfort myself whenever I was going through stress. Oh yes, I singlehandedly devoured a whole vanilla birthday cake in four hours. Afterwards, I went on an all liquid diet for a month to exonerate myself!

Food was in abundance, but now As my stomach continued to gurgle, rumble and growl with utter abandon, I wished that I was standing in front of my overstuffed kitchen refrigerator eating cheese cake and whipped cream. I wished that I ate all my corn bread at the soul food restaurant. I crave that rice and beans I ignored at the Spanish restaurant. I missed raiding my refrigerator for the creamy butterscotch and vanilla ice-cream.

I painfully turned over on my back. I saw a reflection of a woman in the dirty mirror in the corner of the room. The unkempt woman had dark sunken eyes with large head; bony legs and arms; dried lips and patchy hair. Her face looked haunted. Her skin was full of dark welts. She was wearing tattered dirty red shorts and a black T-shirt. The T-shirt was in worse condition than the red shorts. In front of the T-Shirt was a picture of McDonald's yellow arch. As I stared at her, she did a strange thing. She was picking up dried leaves from the ground and was eating them. It took my glucose starved brain a couple of minutes to realize that the skeleton woman was me. I started to cry but there weren't any tears. I began to hallucinate about food. I saw McDonald's Big Mac and French fries floating above me. As I tried to reach for them, darkness overwhelmed me, and I passed out.

As I woke up, I could still feel my stomach growling. I decided to find foodany food. I made a decision - If I die, it would be from the hands of my captors, but I would not die from starvation. So I started slowly and painfully to crawl on my stomach and my elbows. I didn't know where I was going or what I was going to do next. I must conquer my new enemy -hunger. I must find food. I didn't care how many calories or the amount. I was ready to eat anything. I had to have some food. I didn't care if I died in the process

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