Loneliness

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  infallibility would have chosen himself. Benedict persisted in calling the Council of Constance the "congregation," or assembly. On Nov. 14 he fled to Peñiscola, a rocky promontory near Valencia, again condemned the Swiss synod, and summoned a legitimate one to meet in his isolated Spanish retreat. His own cardinals were weary of the conflict, and Dec. 13, 1415, declared him deposed. His long-time supporter, Vincent Ferrer, called him a perjurer. The following month the kingdom of Aragon, which had been Benedict’s chief support, withdrew from his obedience and was followed by Castile and Scotland. Peter de Luna was now as thoroughly isolated as any mortal could well be. The council demanded his unconditional abdication, and was strengthened by the admission of his old supporters, the Spanish delegates. At the thirty-seventh session, 1417, he was deposed. By Sigismund’s command the decision was announced on the streets of Constance by trumpeters. But the indomitable Spaniard continued to defy the synod’s sentence till his death, nine years later, and from the lonely citadel of Peñiscola to sit as sovereign of Christendom. Cardinal Hergenröther concludes his description of these events by saying that Benedict "was a pope without a church and a shepherd without sheep. This very fact proves the emptiness of his claims." Benedict died, 1423,314 leaving behind him four cardinals. Three of these elected the canon, Gil Sauduz de Munoz of Barcelona, who took the name of Clement VIII. Five years later Gil resigned, and was appointed by Martin V. bishop of Majorca, on which island he was a pope with insular jurisdiction.315 The fourth cardinal, Jean Carrier, elected himself pope, and took the name of Benedict XIV. He died in prison, 1433. It remained for the council to terminate the schism of years by electing a new pontiff and to proceed to the discussions of Church reforms. At the fortieth session, Oct. 30, 1417, it was decided to postpone the second item until after the election of the new pope. In fixing this order of business, the cardinals had a large influence. There was a time in the history of the council when they were disparaged. Tracts were written against them, and the king at one time, so it was rumored, proposed to seize them all.316 But that time was past; they had kept united, and their influence had steadily grown. The papal vacancy was filled, Nov. 11, 1417, by the election of Cardinal Oddo Colonna, who took the name of Martin V. The election was consummated in the Kaufhaus, the central commercial building of Constance, which is still standing. Fifty-three electors participated, 6 deputies from each of the 5 nations, and 23 cardinals. The building was walled up with boards and divided into cells for the electors. Entrance was had by a single door, and the three keys were given, one to the king, one to the chapter of Constance, and one to the council.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Jules Bonnet: Idelette de Bure, femme de Calvin. In the "Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire du protestantisme français." Quatrième année. Paris, 1856. pp. 636–646.—D. Lenoir, ibid. 1860. p. 26. (A brief note.) Henry, I. 407 sqq.—Dyer, 99 sqq.—Stähelin, I. 272 sqq.—Merle d’Aubigné, bk. XI. ch. XVII, (vol. VI. 601–608).—Stricker, l.c. 42–50. (Kampschulte is silent on this topic.) The most important event in Calvin’s private life during his sojourn in Germany was his marriage, which took place early in August, 1540.584 He expresses his views on marriage in his comments on Ephesians 5:28–33. "It is a thing against nature," he remarks, "that any one should not love his wife, for God has ordained marriage in order that two may be made one person—a result which, certainly, no other alliance can bring about. When Moses says that a man shall leave father and mother and cleave unto his wife, he shows that a man ought to prefer marriage to every other union, as being the holiest of all. It reflects our union with Christ, who infuses his very life unto us; for we are flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone. This is a great mystery, the dignity of which cannot be expressed in words." He himself was in no hurry to get married, and put it off till he was over thirty. He rather boasted that people could not charge him with having assailed Rome, as the Greeks besieged Troy, for the sake of a woman. What led him first to think of it, was the sense of loneliness and the need of proper care, that he might be able the better to serve the Church. He had a housekeeper, with her son, a woman of violent temper who sorely tried his patience. At one time she abused his brother so violently that he left the house, and then she ran away, leaving her son behind. The disturbance made him sick.585 He was often urged by his friend Farel (who himself found no time to think of marrying till his old age), and by Bucer, to take a wife, that he might enjoy the comforts of a well-ordered home. He first mentions the subject in a letter to Farel, from Strassburg, May 19, 1539, in which he says: "I am none of those insane lovers who, when once smitten with the fine figure of a woman, embrace also her faults. This only is the beauty which allures me, if she be chaste, obliging, not fastidious, economical, patient, and careful for my health.586 Therefore, if you think well of it, set out immediately, lest some one else [Bucer?] gets the start of you. But if you think otherwise we will let it pass." It seems Farel could not find a person that combined all these qualities, and the matter was dropped for several months. In Feb.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  “I snuck out the back door,” he’d reply, and I’d try to imagine what the back door of the Navy looked like. Now those questions were forbidden. More crushing was the follow-on restriction that forbade anyone at the Center to contact their family members who lived “out in the world.” Until then, my favorite Saturday pastime had been visiting my Grandma Walsh. “Let’s go for a ride,” my father would say, and I knew what that meant—we were heading to Quincy for the afternoon to see my relatives. Entering the house where my father had grown up, I’d run to my grandmother as she sat in her usual spot on the couch in the living room. Though her hair was white and she wore eyeglasses, I didn’t think of her as old, as I’d sit in her lap and hold her hand and rest my head on her bosom while my father and she chatted. I adored her. Then without explanation, the trips stopped. “When are we going to see Grandma?” I’d ask my father. “Soon, my little princess,” he’d say. (That was his pet name for me.) But it didn’t happen, and after a while, I stopped asking. It wasn’t long before I was aware that the PL rule didn’t apply to Father. The much anticipated trips to my grandmother’s were soon supplanted by visits to the Feeney house and his parents, who lived in the Boston suburb of Lynn. The dark mahogany-paneled rooms of the Feeney home were in sharp contrast to the light-filled and cheerful home of my grandmother. A large vase of faded hydrangeas that sat on a round marble-topped table in the front hall set the stage for the gloom that permeated the house. [image file=Image00018.jpg] Holding my Grandma Walsh’s hand with my father, sister Cathy, and brother David–1952. “They’re dried flowers,” Mariam told me on one occasion when I wrinkled my nose at them. Dead was a better description, I thought. Mr. Feeney sat like a crumpled rag doll on a sofa in front of two tall windows covered with red velvet drapes that obliterated daylight. His wife brought us cookies and milk and in between nibbles and sips, we had to recite poems Father had written once upon a time when he was the famous and beloved American Catholic poet, long before his fall from grace. For my part, I couldn’t wait to get back home. * * * With a shovel in his hand, my dad started digging. “Daddy, what are you doing?” I asked, ever curious and fascinated by the multiple deep holes that lined up like sentinels along the sidewalk. “Building a fence, my little princess,” he replied. “Now stay away, so you don’t get hurt.” Mariam filled me in on the rest. “The fence is going to go all around our houses.” She was right.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  But this year I would be excluded from the festivities within the community because I was no longer considered a member of the family. I wanted desperately to be part of the celebrations, but there was only one person who could make that happen, and I had no intention of asking her. Sister Catherine had done nothing to reach out to me since I left—not a letter or even a message through my mother. I was dead to her. I kept my sadness to myself, not willing to share it even with Sister Elizabeth Ann. There was nothing served by upsetting her, and the last thing I wanted was for her to get into a fight with Sister Catherine as she argued on my behalf. But when my mother arrived at St. Joseph’s House one evening carrying a small Christmas tree and an array of ornaments, I was grateful, convinced she sensed my loneliness on this first Christmas as an outcast. Together we decorated the tree, making small talk—she shared her favorite Christmas memories, and after we topped our miniature tree with a porcelain angel, we turned to making Christmas cookies. “I plan to attend Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve,” I said. “I just won’t sit in this house alone. I don’t care what Sister Catherine thinks.” My mother’s response was better than I imagined. “You do that, darling. I’ll support you.” There was an inner excitement in my decision—this was my first opportunity to get a peek at the family I’d been missing for the last six months. They’d all be there, crowded into the chapel, no one but Center members because the Mass was not open to the public. I picked my outfit carefully—a suitably long dark-grey herringbone wool dress and a black square of lace that served as a veil. There was no worldliness in my attire. Over it all, I wore a floor-length black wool coat. I could barely be distinguished from the Big Sisters in their habits. I lingered outside the chapel until the organ blared jubilantly, and Father, preceded by his entourage, solemnly exited the sacristy, walking slowly down the aisle toward the altar. As the community began to sing the most glorious of Christmas Gregorian chants, “Christe Redemptor Omnium,” I slipped furtively into the chapel, selecting my place in the farthest-back seat of the Big Sisters’ pew. I was hardly detectable; on the other hand, I had a wide-angle view of everyone. During the Mass, I scanned the chapel scene from my vantage point, taking note of each of my siblings. Surreptitiously, I checked out Brother Basil, whom I still missed immeasurably. Did he miss me? I wondered. I stared long and hard at Sister Catherine’s profile as she sat regally in her place of prominence in front of the altar, with an air of hauteur, much like a portrait of Marie Antoinette. Her attention was fixed, as though in a trance. She doesn’t even know I’m here.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  As I slipped it on my finger, my mother said, “That belonged to your great-grandmother, dahling. I thought you’d like it.” “Thank you so much,” I replied, in a daze over this unexpected treat. Sister Elizabeth Ann then headed to the Community meeting and I remained behind, uninvited to share in the Christmas celebrations. I pondered my loneliness, my isolation and then… Do it , my inner self told me, and I did. Putting on my long, black, heavy wool coat, with gold buttons in a double-breasted fashion down the front, I opened the front door and made my way briskly down the walkway, across the road to St. Therese’s House, through the porter’s room, the guest dining room, and the library, and into the noisy front room. Every member of the community was there. Big Brothers and Sisters floated among the families that sat in clusters surrounded by toboggans, coasters, ice skates, and other presents that spilled beyond the branches of a broad, elegantly decorated, balsam fir Christmas tree, topped by an angel ornament that reached to the ceiling. My family was in its usual spot next to the fireplace, and I joined them with a sense of self-assuredness, well aware that my presence would soon be evident to the rest of the community. From the corner of my eye, I could see the form of Sister Catherine, standing tall near the Christmas tree, her inner circle, her “courtiers,” by her side. I was unfazed. She had lost her power over me. For the next hour, I engaged with my family as though I were once again part of the community, querying my siblings on what they got in their stockings and showing them the new ring on my finger. When the telltale bell rang to signal the end of the community meeting, Sister Catherine stood outside her office door, wishing all a Merry Christmas. I strode past her, ignoring her, while flaunting my presence with my family by laughing and kissing them goodbye in front of her. That Christmas was to bring me one more present. As I sat down to have dinner with Sister Elizabeth Ann—a meal as elegant as what the rest of the community was having—the front door opened and in walked Brother James Aloysius. My initial instinct was panic. He’s going to get into trouble, I thought. But the confidence with which he gave each of us a kiss and a “Merry Christmas” greeting calmed my nerves. He joined us for dinner, and as we ate and chatted, I reveled in our family togetherness. But still there was something missing. Maybe one day all seven of us will be able to have dinner together . 56 Roots and Wings 1967 T he secretarial course at the Hickox School seemed like child’s play compared to the classes I had taken in high school and I sped through the ten-month routine by February, a record time according to the stout headmistress.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  “Give my love to Eleanor and Dan,” she said. As I hugged Sister Elizabeth Ann, I glanced up at Sister Catherine’s office window to see whether she was watching us—observing this final embrace, in violation of the rules. If she was there, I couldn’t see her. Brother James Aloysius opened the car door for me, and I got in. As he settled into the driver’s seat, he took my hand and said in his reassuring way, “My little princess, everything will be fine. I promise you. The Learys are expecting us for lunch.” We pulled out of the driveway. I turned and waved to Sister Elizabeth Ann. I was now officially kicked out of the Center—my home. There was no invitation to come back. PART 4 Uncloistered 54 The Summer of ’66 1966 T he leitmotif of family life was foreign to me. I was the intruder in an alien world, with no grasp of how to fit in. I was jolted into the reality of my new life when my uncle and aunt greeted me as “Mary Pat,” a name I hadn’t used since I was five years old. Each morning, while my cousins donned shorts and miniskirts and headed to their summer jobs or to play tennis, I slipped into my painfully unfashionable calf-length, pleated, pink cotton dress, belted at the waist and buttoned to the neck, and made my way to St. John’s Church to attend Mass. There, as I knelt in a pew that was neither prominently in the front nor hidden at the rear of the church, I was taken aback to hear the words of the Latin Mass (words I knew by heart) spoken in the vernacular, a result of the Second Vatican Council—an event the Center had decried for its abandonment of the true faith. But I found it hard to be scandalized by the prayers spoken in English. For sure, I thought, not everyone knew Latin as I did, and the words had to mean so much more when people could understand them. Hardly gone a week from the Center, I found myself challenging their doctrinaire view of the Latin Mass. Kneeling among the sparsely populated congregation that consisted mostly of ancient-looking ladies with lace doilies on their heads (in lieu of proper veils), I might have appeared to them like a serious young woman spending her last summer in the carefree world before heading into the convent, rather than the failed postulant I was who’d just been kicked out of the convent. My oldest cousin, Paul, was heading off to college in the fall. He had security in his life. I, on the other hand, was adrift. His road to the future was paved, while I was caught in a jungle without a clue as to how to navigate my way through it.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  I had (and have?) this void, this cavern of loneliness inside me that I have spent my whole life trying to fill. I was willing to do most anything if that boy would ease my loneliness. I wanted to feel like he and I belonged to each other, but each time we were together and then after, I felt quite the opposite. And still, I was drawn to him. At the time I was, and would continue to be for many years, obsessed with the Sweet Valley High books. I read them voraciously because I was nothing like Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield or even Enid Rollins. I would never date a boy like Todd Wilkins, the handsome captain of the basketball team, or Bruce Patman, the handsome, wealthy bad boy of Sweet Valley. When I read the books, though, I could pretend that a better life was possible for me, one where I fit in somewhere, anywhere, and I had friends and a handsome boyfriend and a loving family who knew everything about me. In a better life, I could pretend I was a good girl. This boy Christopher, so handsome and so popular, was my piece of Sweet Valley High in my well-manicured, suburban neighborhood. Certainly, no one could know this because he never acknowledged me at school, but I knew and I told myself that was enough. For many, many years to come, I would keep telling myself that the barest minimum of acknowledgment from lovers was enough. We would hang out in his bedroom and flip through worn copies of his older brother’s Playboy and Hustler magazines. I studied these naked women, mostly young white blond thin taut. Their bodies seemed alien, unreal. I knew it was wrong to look at these women displaying such wanton nakedness, but I couldn’t look away. He clearly found these women exciting, sexually attractive, and I knew, even then, that I was nothing like them. I didn’t really want to be like those women but I wanted him to want me and I wanted him to look at me the way he looked at the magazines. He never did, and in his way, he punished me for what I wasn’t and couldn’t be. He punished me for being too young and too naïve, too adoring and too accommodating. I was a thing to him, even before he and his friends raped me. He wanted to try things and I was extraordinarily pliable. I didn’t know how to say no. It never crossed my mind to say no. This was the price I had to pay, I told myself, to be loved by him or, if I was honest with myself, to be tolerated by him. A girl like me, pliable and sheltered and unworthy and desperately craving his attention, did not dare hope for anything more. I knew that.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  In rural Illinois, I lived in a town surrounded by cornfields, in an apartment complex next to an open meadow, the site of ambition thwarted when the developer who built the complex ran out of money. The meadow was wide and green, bordered by trees. In the fall, I often saw a family of deer galloping across the field. They reminded me of Michigan. Especially early on, they made me think, I want to go home, and I would startle, that my heart, my body, considered such an unexpected place home. The man didn’t follow. The man didn’t understand why I would not, could not, raise brown children in the only place he had ever called home. There was more to it, but there was also that. At the end of every summer, a farmer threshed the meadow and hauled the hay away. I stood on my balcony and watched as he worked, methodically, making the land useful. I had a job, I kept telling myself. At least I had a job. This town was bigger. I nurtured a very small dream—to live in a place where I could get my hair done—without knowing if that dream would ever come true. There was a Starbucks, though not much else. There was loneliness. There were a few very, very unsuitable men who made everything ugly. We were three hours from Chicago, so my blackness was less of a curiosity, more of a threat. And there were the black students on campus, the nerve of them, daring to pursue higher education. In the local newspaper, residents wrote angry letters about a new criminal element—the scourge of youthful black ambition, black joy. In my more generous moments, I tried to believe the locals were using anger to mask their fear of living in a dying town in a changing world.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  And still, when I am with my family, when we become that island unto ourselves, I allow myself to be a part of them. I am trying to forgive and make up for lost time, to close the distances I put between us even though it was necessary, for a time, for me to be apart from them. These are the people who know not all of me but know enough, know what matters most. They continue to love me so hard and I love them hard in return. Every New Year’s Eve, we all convene in Florida and attend a gala at my parents’ country club. There is a five-course meal—lots of tiny, twee dishes. There is drinking and dancing. Even surrounded by a hundred other people, we are unto ourselves. We return to my parents’ house by one in the morning and the party continues—furniture moved, konpa music playing, more dancing, my brothers and cousin and me staring at the breathtaking spectacle of this family, the beautiful beast we become when we are together. My hunger is particularly acute when I visit my parents. For one, they are minimalists when it comes to keeping food in the house. They travel a lot, so it doesn’t make sense to keep fresh produce around, knowing it will likely spoil before it is eaten. And though they eat and, I am sure, enjoy a good meal, my parents are not people who take exceptional pleasure in food. They rarely snack. Any food in the house generally requires some kind of preparation. But there is also the paranoia I develop. I feel like everything I do is being watched, scrutinized, judged. I deprive myself, to give the appearance of conforming, of making some small effort to become thinner, better, less of a family problem. Because that’s what they tell me—my weight is a family problem. So, in addition to my body, I carry that burden too, knowing that my loved ones consider me their problem until I finally lose “the weight.” I start to crave foods, any foods. I get uncontrollable urges to binge, to satisfy the growing ache, to fill the hollowness of feeling alone around the people who are supposed to love me the most, to soothe the pain of having the same painful conversations year after year after year after year. I am so much more than hungry when I am home. I am starving. I am an animal. I am desperate to be fed. 67I come from a beautiful family. They are thin, stylish, attractive. Often, when I am around them, I do not feel like I belong. I do not feel like I deserve to be among them. When I look at family photos, which I assiduously avoid, I think, One of these things is not like the other, and it is a haunting, lonely feeling, thinking you don’t belong with the very people who know you in the truest, deepest ways.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  In rural Illinois, I lived in a town surrounded by cornfields, in an apartment complex next to an open meadow, the site of ambition thwarted when the developer who built the complex ran out of money. The meadow was wide and green, bordered by trees. In the fall, I often saw a family of deer galloping across the field. They reminded me of Michigan. Especially early on, they made me think, I want to go home, and I would startle, that my heart, my body, considered such an unexpected place home. The man didn’t follow. The man didn’t understand why I would not, could not, raise brown children in the only place he had ever called home. There was more to it, but there was also that. At the end of every summer, a farmer threshed the meadow and hauled the hay away. I stood on my balcony and watched as he worked, methodically, making the land useful. I had a job, I kept telling myself. At least I had a job. This town was bigger. I nurtured a very small dream—to live in a place where I could get my hair done—without knowing if that dream would ever come true. There was a Starbucks, though not much else. There was loneliness. There were a few very, very unsuitable men who made everything ugly. We were three hours from Chicago, so my blackness was less of a curiosity, more of a threat. And there were the black students on campus, the nerve of them, daring to pursue higher education. In the local newspaper, residents wrote angry letters about a new criminal element—the scourge of youthful black ambition, black joy. In my more generous moments, I tried to believe the locals were using anger to mask their fear of living in a dying town in a changing world.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  I very much wanted to be a writer, so I enrolled in the MA program in creative writing at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. I worked at night and went to school during the day. I was broke all the time, which is not to be confused with being poor. I had a safety net and I knew I had a safety net, and though there were many days I was fueled by ramen, still I did not go hungry while I hungered. I rarely slept because it was in sleep that I was forced to confront myself, my past. I was tormented by terrible dreams, memories really, of those boys, the woods, my body at their lack of mercy. At the university, I went to classes and learned about Victorian literature and cultural theory and postcolonialism and I sat in workshops with students who were surprisingly generous in their feedback about my writing, given common wisdom about writing workshops. I served as an editorial assistant for Prairie Schooner, the program’s literary magazine, and was mostly relegated to opening all the incoming mail—hundreds of submissions a week from writers like me who just wanted to be discovered. It was there that I learned that one of the best ways to measure where you stand as a writer is to work at a literary magazine. We received all manner of submissions. People sent in diaries, odes to their cats, entire novels or books of poetry, all carefully printed out and stuffed into manila envelopes. There were many submissions from prisoners who were just as lonely as I was, who had found their voices in their prison cells and wanted their voices to be heard. I pored over the cover letters from all these writers who would share seemingly anything about their lives.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  I was still a mess. I spent a lot of time in my room, on my computer, tying up the phone line with my modem, which did not go over well with the rest of my family. It was easier to lose myself in the virtual world than to try and put my life back together or face these people who thought they knew me. I was still broken and I liked how it felt to simply accept that everything was wrong and couldn’t be set right. It felt good to not try and pretend. 27After several tense months of living at home in Omaha, I moved to Lincoln, about fifty miles away. I wanted my independence and my “space” and to feel like an adult even though I was so far from being an adult. I was twenty years old and I felt like I was twelve years old and I felt like I was twenty years old and I felt like I was a hundred years old. I knew nothing but thought I knew everything. The apartment, subsidized by my parents of course, was a one-bedroom with a tiny kitchen and a balcony, where I smoked with continued enthusiasm. I went to my parents’ house often, and I would stock up on toilet paper and groceries from my mother’s pantry. Things were still fractured between us, but I knew, as always, that I had a home. I had a very well-financed crack-up. I did not go hungry even as I hungered for so much. To at least try to support myself, I held a series of odd jobs—adult video store clerk, telemarketer, Gallup poll taker, loan consolidator at a student loan company—and quickly realized that without a college degree I was only ever going to work odd jobs for minimum wage. I was readmitted to Yale, but the thought of returning to New Haven was unbearable. I turned twenty-one and celebrated by buying a six-pack of Corona even though I hate the taste and stink of beer. Later that night, a woman I was casually dating called, and when I mentioned it was my birthday and I was sitting alone in my apartment, with a sweaty six-pack of cheap beer, she offered to show me a good time. I don’t even remember what we did. I had no friends. I ended up finishing my degree through a brief residency program at Vermont College, which was, at the time, part of Norwich University—a military college in Vermont. I wrote and wrote and wrote.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  73The thing is, though, loneliness, like losing control of my body, is a matter of accretion. Twelve years of living in very rural places, a lifetime of shyness and social ineptitude and isolation, these things make the loneliness build and build and it cloaks me, sometimes. It is a constant, unwelcome companion. For so long, I closed myself off from everything and everyone. Terrible things happened and I had to shut down to survive. I was cold, I’ve been told. I often write stories about women who are perceived as cold and resent that perception. I write these women because I know what it’s like to have so much warmth roiling beneath the skin’s surface, ready to be found. I am not cold. I wasn’t ever cold. My warmth was hidden far away from anything that could bring hurt because I knew I didn’t have the inner scaffolding to endure any more hurt in those protected places. My warmth was hidden until I found the right people with whom to share it, people I could trust—friends from graduate school, friends I met through the writing community when I was first starting out, the people who have always been willing to see and take me exactly as I am. I am not promiscuous with my warmth, but when I share it, my warmth can be as hot as the sun. 74Part of the reason relationships and friendships can be so difficult for me is because there is a part of me that thinks I have to get things just right. I have to say the right things and do the right things or I won’t be liked or loved anymore. It’s stressful, so then I engage in an elaborate attempt at being the best friend or girlfriend and get further and further away from who I really am, someone with a good heart, but also someone who may not always get things right. I find myself apologizing for things I shouldn’t be apologizing for, things I am not at all sorry for. I find myself apologizing for who I am. And even when I am with good, kind, loving people, I don’t trust that goodness, kindness, or love. I worry that sooner or later, they will make my losing weight a condition of their continued affection. That fear makes me try harder to get things right, as if I am hedging my bets. All of this makes me very hard on myself, very driven. I just keep working and working and working and trying to be right, and I lose sight of who I am or what I want, which leaves me in a less than ideal place. It leaves me . . . nowhere.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  I was swallowing my secrets and making my body expand and explode. I found ways to hide in plain sight, to keep feeding a hunger that could never be satisfied—the hunger to stop hurting. I made myself bigger. I made myself safer. I created a distinct boundary between myself and anyone who dared to approach me. I created a boundary between myself and my family. I became of them but not. Being at boarding school was also something of a shock to my understanding of the world. I had grown up middle class and then upper middle class, but at Exeter, I encountered students who came from families who harbored generations of wealth, fame, and/or infamy—the children of political scions, Hollywood celebrities, and industrial dynasties. I thought I knew wealth until I went to boarding school, and then I learned what wealth truly looks like. I learned that there are people with so much money at their disposal they take lavish spending for granted and have no interest in those without the same privileges. I didn’t feel inadequate. However lost I was, I knew I was loved and lucky. But I was overwhelmed by how cavalierly these wealthy peers moved through the world, and how much was available to them. As I was a black student from a reasonably well-off family, and I was from Nebraska, of all places, the white students didn’t quite know what to do with me. I was an anomaly, and I didn’t fit their assumed narrative about blackness. They assumed that all black students came from impoverished backgrounds and lived in the inner city. They assumed all black students attended Exeter by the grace of financial aid and white benevolence. Most of the black students only grudgingly accepted me into their social circles because I didn’t fit their assumed narrative about blackness, either. As a Haitian American, I didn’t have the same cultural touchstones. There were few students with whom I had any kind of common ground. As a socially awkward, shy girl, my loneliness became even more pronounced. Food was not only comfort; food also became my friend because it was constant and I didn’t need to be anything but myself when I ate.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  73The thing is, though, loneliness, like losing control of my body, is a matter of accretion. Twelve years of living in very rural places, a lifetime of shyness and social ineptitude and isolation, these things make the loneliness build and build and it cloaks me, sometimes. It is a constant, unwelcome companion. For so long, I closed myself off from everything and everyone. Terrible things happened and I had to shut down to survive. I was cold, I’ve been told. I often write stories about women who are perceived as cold and resent that perception. I write these women because I know what it’s like to have so much warmth roiling beneath the skin’s surface, ready to be found. I am not cold. I wasn’t ever cold. My warmth was hidden far away from anything that could bring hurt because I knew I didn’t have the inner scaffolding to endure any more hurt in those protected places. My warmth was hidden until I found the right people with whom to share it, people I could trust—friends from graduate school, friends I met through the writing community when I was first starting out, the people who have always been willing to see and take me exactly as I am. I am not promiscuous with my warmth, but when I share it, my warmth can be as hot as the sun. 74Part of the reason relationships and friendships can be so difficult for me is because there is a part of me that thinks I have to get things just right. I have to say the right things and do the right things or I won’t be liked or loved anymore. It’s stressful, so then I engage in an elaborate attempt at being the best friend or girlfriend and get further and further away from who I really am, someone with a good heart, but also someone who may not always get things right. I find myself apologizing for things I shouldn’t be apologizing for, things I am not at all sorry for. I find myself apologizing for who I am. And even when I am with good, kind, loving people, I don’t trust that goodness, kindness, or love. I worry that sooner or later, they will make my losing weight a condition of their continued affection. That fear makes me try harder to get things right, as if I am hedging my bets. All of this makes me very hard on myself, very driven. I just keep working and working and working and trying to be right, and I lose sight of who I am or what I want, which leaves me in a less than ideal place. It leaves me . . . nowhere.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  I very much wanted to be a writer, so I enrolled in the MA program in creative writing at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. I worked at night and went to school during the day. I was broke all the time, which is not to be confused with being poor. I had a safety net and I knew I had a safety net, and though there were many days I was fueled by ramen, still I did not go hungry while I hungered. I rarely slept because it was in sleep that I was forced to confront myself, my past. I was tormented by terrible dreams, memories really, of those boys, the woods, my body at their lack of mercy. At the university, I went to classes and learned about Victorian literature and cultural theory and postcolonialism and I sat in workshops with students who were surprisingly generous in their feedback about my writing, given common wisdom about writing workshops. I served as an editorial assistant for Prairie Schooner, the program’s literary magazine, and was mostly relegated to opening all the incoming mail—hundreds of submissions a week from writers like me who just wanted to be discovered. It was there that I learned that one of the best ways to measure where you stand as a writer is to work at a literary magazine. We received all manner of submissions. People sent in diaries, odes to their cats, entire novels or books of poetry, all carefully printed out and stuffed into manila envelopes. There were many submissions from prisoners who were just as lonely as I was, who had found their voices in their prison cells and wanted their voices to be heard. I pored over the cover letters from all these writers who would share seemingly anything about their lives.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  And still, when I am with my family, when we become that island unto ourselves, I allow myself to be a part of them. I am trying to forgive and make up for lost time, to close the distances I put between us even though it was necessary, for a time, for me to be apart from them. These are the people who know not all of me but know enough, know what matters most. They continue to love me so hard and I love them hard in return. Every New Year’s Eve, we all convene in Florida and attend a gala at my parents’ country club. There is a five-course meal—lots of tiny, twee dishes. There is drinking and dancing. Even surrounded by a hundred other people, we are unto ourselves. We return to my parents’ house by one in the morning and the party continues—furniture moved, konpa music playing, more dancing, my brothers and cousin and me staring at the breathtaking spectacle of this family, the beautiful beast we become when we are together. My hunger is particularly acute when I visit my parents. For one, they are minimalists when it comes to keeping food in the house. They travel a lot, so it doesn’t make sense to keep fresh produce around, knowing it will likely spoil before it is eaten. And though they eat and, I am sure, enjoy a good meal, my parents are not people who take exceptional pleasure in food. They rarely snack. Any food in the house generally requires some kind of preparation. But there is also the paranoia I develop. I feel like everything I do is being watched, scrutinized, judged. I deprive myself, to give the appearance of conforming, of making some small effort to become thinner, better, less of a family problem. Because that’s what they tell me—my weight is a family problem. So, in addition to my body, I carry that burden too, knowing that my loved ones consider me their problem until I finally lose “the weight.” I start to crave foods, any foods. I get uncontrollable urges to binge, to satisfy the growing ache, to fill the hollowness of feeling alone around the people who are supposed to love me the most, to soothe the pain of having the same painful conversations year after year after year after year. I am so much more than hungry when I am home. I am starving. I am an animal. I am desperate to be fed. 67I come from a beautiful family. They are thin, stylish, attractive. Often, when I am around them, I do not feel like I belong. I do not feel like I deserve to be among them. When I look at family photos, which I assiduously avoid, I think, One of these things is not like the other, and it is a haunting, lonely feeling, thinking you don’t belong with the very people who know you in the truest, deepest ways.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  I was always skeptical of his attention, always waiting for him to reveal his true, cruel self, but day after day and week after week, he was good to me. He was solid. He ignored my casual barbs and resisted any and all attempts to push him away. He drank too much, but he was a happy drunk, the kind to laugh at his own jokes and fall asleep with a smile on his face. I quit smoking because I was getting older and realized I had been smoking for eighteen years and that I had to at least try to love myself enough to give up one of my terrible but beloved habits. I was online all the time, starting to blog for websites like HTMLGiant and The Rumpus. I discovered social networking. I started sending my writing out into the world again. Jon called anyone I knew online one of my “little friends in the computer.” Some weekends, he would take me to his camp, the Upper Peninsula version of a remote lake cabin. There was no Internet up there and barely any cell phone service. I had to disconnect from the safety of the virtual world and be present in the real world, with him. He was the first man who touched me with any kind of gentleness, even when I asked him not to. He loved me and, over time, I realized I loved him too. We had a good relationship, one with more ups than downs. And then I came to the end of my doctoral program. I got a job teaching at Eastern Illinois University. I was starting to make a name for myself as a writer. I had every reason to feel hopeful. Jon and I had countless conversations about what we would do. He wanted me to stay. A part of me wanted to do it, to just settle down and become a logger’s wife. But a bigger part of me wanted him to follow me because I had worked so hard for five years. I had accomplished something not many people, and even fewer black women, accomplish. I wanted to believe in our love story. I waited for him to make the grand gesture I wanted and needed from him. I wanted to believe I was worthy of that grand gesture.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  I had (and have?) this void, this cavern of loneliness inside me that I have spent my whole life trying to fill. I was willing to do most anything if that boy would ease my loneliness. I wanted to feel like he and I belonged to each other, but each time we were together and then after, I felt quite the opposite. And still, I was drawn to him. At the time I was, and would continue to be for many years, obsessed with the Sweet Valley High books. I read them voraciously because I was nothing like Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield or even Enid Rollins. I would never date a boy like Todd Wilkins, the handsome captain of the basketball team, or Bruce Patman, the handsome, wealthy bad boy of Sweet Valley. When I read the books, though, I could pretend that a better life was possible for me, one where I fit in somewhere, anywhere, and I had friends and a handsome boyfriend and a loving family who knew everything about me. In a better life, I could pretend I was a good girl. This boy Christopher, so handsome and so popular, was my piece of Sweet Valley High in my well-manicured, suburban neighborhood. Certainly, no one could know this because he never acknowledged me at school, but I knew and I told myself that was enough. For many, many years to come, I would keep telling myself that the barest minimum of acknowledgment from lovers was enough. We would hang out in his bedroom and flip through worn copies of his older brother’s Playboy and Hustler magazines. I studied these naked women, mostly young white blond thin taut. Their bodies seemed alien, unreal. I knew it was wrong to look at these women displaying such wanton nakedness, but I couldn’t look away. He clearly found these women exciting, sexually attractive, and I knew, even then, that I was nothing like them. I didn’t really want to be like those women but I wanted him to want me and I wanted him to look at me the way he looked at the magazines. He never did, and in his way, he punished me for what I wasn’t and couldn’t be. He punished me for being too young and too naïve, too adoring and too accommodating. I was a thing to him, even before he and his friends raped me. He wanted to try things and I was extraordinarily pliable. I didn’t know how to say no. It never crossed my mind to say no. This was the price I had to pay, I told myself, to be loved by him or, if I was honest with myself, to be tolerated by him. A girl like me, pliable and sheltered and unworthy and desperately craving his attention, did not dare hope for anything more. I knew that.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  Early in the first semester of my sophomore year, I lost what currency I had gained over the summer. Within a few weeks, I immediately began eating again, working vigilantly to undo the progress I had made the previous summer. My newly narrowed face plumped up. My stomach strained against the waistbands of my pants. My breasts swelled wildly because not only was I gaining a lot of weight, I was going through puberty. I still held on to the hope that my boarding school life might resemble The Girls of Canby Hall, that I would bond with all the girls in my dorm and all my teachers would love me. That was never my experience. Loneliness remained a constant companion. I didn’t have many friends. I was awkward and maladjusted around the friends I did have, and most of the time, I was certain they only tolerated me out of pity. I regularly said the wrong things. I invented a boyfriend, Mr. X, and I don’t know what makes me cringe more now—that I used this bizarre pseudonym for my invention or that I invented a pseudonym at all. I couldn’t even come up with a credible name for the imaginary man of my dreams. Eventually, the girls in my social circle figured out that I’d described Mr. X based on one of their boyfriends, which was, as you might imagine, incredibly awkward, and they did not let me forget it. I had no fashion sense. I didn’t know how to style my hair. I didn’t know how to be a normal girl. I didn’t know how to be human. It was a sad, sad time. Every day was a crushing disappointment or gauntlet of humiliation. And then, later in the fall of my sophomore year, I began experiencing severe pain in my abdomen. It would keep me up at night, gasping and in tears, alone in a dorm room, far from home. I went to the infirmary, which was not known for any kind of competence, and the staff asked me, over and over, if I might be pregnant. That was, in their minds, the most likely problem a teenage girl could have. I wasn’t pregnant, but they weren’t really interested in investigating further. They sent me on my way each time, not seeming to take me seriously. The medical community is not particularly interested in taking the pain of women seriously.