I Want To Live

Written by Highest Kite

In 2014, our English Teacher – who doubled as a life coach –  asked what we were grateful for. Many more of us gave generic answers like good health, the gift of life, our families, studies and so on, but to my ears, the answer that stood out was when a friend said, “I thank God for my appetite.” 

Didn’t she have loved ones she wanted to sprinkle good luck on from afar? Didn’t she want good grades in the coming exams or a real date during the holidays? We were sixteen and shy, but I’d already had sex and knew she had too, so didn’t she want forgiveness? No. My bestie then wanted food but ten years later, I’ve watched her get ‘full’ in a way I loathe but do too when I push aside a plate with a concerning amount of food claiming I’m full.

The fill comes not from physical contentment, but from an overwhelming sense of disgust with myself – that I can have so much room in me for food when I am jobless without prospects, living at home and dependent on marijuana. Who am I to eat to her fill? What have I done to deserve this plate of food? Why should I live to see tomorrow, or next week? Usually, my meals end up over a sink, a toilet bowl, or a cup when I’m seated with company and have no way to hurry into a washroom. 

What this means is I’m terribly underweight and dress in long sleeved tops to cover my slender arms. Still, I cannot evade the questions like, ‘What is wrong with you?’, ‘Don’t you eat?’, ‘Look at your sister, are you normal?’ I believed I was, but I now acknowledge there’s something wrong even though I do not want medical intervention for it. 

Everyone I know enjoys food: from my siblings, to my parents, and best friend. And I thought I did too but this is not true. I rarely have the energy to put a meal inside me let alone the reserve to keep it there. A few months ago, a psychiatrist wrote a prescription for Flora link, a colon forming unit aid. The white powder in a sachet was meant to reintroduce good microbes and regulate the acidity of my gut system. Medically, she believed I was so stressed that my body was killing the good flora and fauna. The result was a body falsely keeping me ‘full’ because it was not aware something was lacking. A second prescription was a type of sleeping pills but the last thing I wanted was to be dependent on manufactured drugs. 

I have a personal principle never to use opiates, however mild. The first and last time I had any, I was twenty-one, in rehab and depressed. The psychiatrist then thought the medication would elevate my gloom but really, all it did was get me stupid high. So high in fact, even though I do not recall the action, I gave a blowjob to a peer and was later properly and thoroughly slut-shamed for this. Mostly by the female management from the nurses, the head psychologist, to my personal therapist. The males played the bullshit role of speaking through the women so that the conversation was on how I had made other patients uncomfortable.

They were so good at their job that they asked me for a urine sample, tested it for pregnancy without my permission, and made the results virtually public. The fucked up part was not how all this was an invention meant to discipline the attention-seeking part in me, it was having to relay all of this to my parents stating why I was shaming them, and their efforts. I didn’t bother to include the effects of what I was taking. It just seemed like giving away ammunition. Until today, I just don’t fuck with pills and when I couldn’t give enough reasons why to the doctor, she thought I was tripping and advised the folks to buy the lot. I later threw out the bunch but stopped taking the colon restorers too. 

I wonder if the feeling of not liking myself is so strong in me that I’ve manifested it physically. When I don’t feel capable or alive, I scratch at my acne until all I am are scars, and finally, when I look into a mirror, I’m a little happy the outside matches the inside. I think I’ve largely scaled this process to fit my entire body. Often, I’ve been told I’m loved, spoiled, lack nothing, and it’s impossible that I’m sad without reason. A part of me thinks if the outside is problematic, then the inside being similar is not so out of this world, and I am human. I have to deal with the questions though, and explain why I’m twenty-six but weigh forty three kilograms on a good day; or why my legs look chickeny and I don’t wear skirts or dresses because I find them gross. 

Unti six to eight weeks ago, I was alright with all this. Alright with doing injustice to my body, myself, and alright with dying. I really was even after the man I was seeing begged me to eat. I just couldn’t trust his reasons for it. He never had any food when I came around even though often, it would be a whole day kind of date. And also, I was afraid he’d take credit for any weight gain I’d have because men still believe their cum is a thickening serum. I secretly also wanted to see if he’d love me, sexy body or not. When we broke up, I had a feeling of relief because if I eat, it is not from the pressure to be presentable and  likeable. 

I believed I was resigned but I am not. My big epiphany was not world stopping or the resolve of a suicidal attempt. I can’t, and don’t want to find the big reason why, but I think it was the protests and riots in June. On the 27th, I showed up in town two days after the massive protest that led to the invasion of parliament and the brutal death of too many like Beasley Kogi, Valentine Njeri, and Eric Kayoni. On circulating videos, the latter was shot in the head and his brains left in two outside the street of the members of the devil’s circle August house. 

As I walked through Moi Avenue that morning, trying not to but still very much staring hard at the military and anti-riot police in groups and pairs, I realised, I do not want to die. Not from a bullet, not from the failed efforts of a sociopathic government, not even from my own self-hate. I want what time has for me, and that starts with feeding so I can have the energy to think, and live. 

Every creature on earth relies on nourishment. The first thing they want is food, so if trees eat light, and the cockroaches in the kitchen eat my cat’s leftovers, then, I too need food. So I am eating, even when I look silly having four mandazis in my bag at all times.