Day 4 Writing Short Stories

Hungry

She had never known where she came from, what people she was made of. She had studied her face so many times, looking over every spot, every curve, every plumb thing, squeezed them, measured them, poked and propped to find clues there. There was none. But the yearning to know didn’t go away; it drove her insane. It gave her this constant hunger, hunger to be witnessed, to belong. So much so that there was a string of men and women she had loved so feverishly, but never belonged to.

There was a destiny there. That much she had been told when people walked out on her. They said she was too much. They told her to find her past and let it go.

Here alone with her thoughts, alone for the first time in her life in the wilderness, surrounded by nothing but snow and the dark fir trees, she was ready to let go of that hunger. Here, there was nothing but the next step to be taken, a steady step, or she would end up dead.

Dying wasn’t the plan. It would solve nothing. She would only end up as a hungry ghost, wandering the wilderness, never getting that resolution she had so sought for so many years, losing her beauty, her sanity, her place.

The plan was to let go. To see more than the self, and that was what she was doing in the middle of nowhere. She had come here for the bears, for the wilderness program. To study and understand something beyond her flesh and bones. It wasn’t going well, but she was set to make it more than yet another project of hers, like her relationships.

—

What a mistake one can make again and again, what tragedy this is to have a human mind capable of fallacies so great that it vexes one. I went to bed too late, too, too, too late, and I’m paying the price now.

My foolish decision made me struggle with writing today. All I’m thinking is that if I finish this quickly, I can be on the couch for a little while before going to work. But I’m glad I got the idea down for the prompt. At first, when I saw realist literature as the genre, I was ready to give up, but I didn’t. The voice drive, rebirth, and limited third-person helped me narrow down what I was to write.

I recognize the hunger and alienation of the protagonist. I think it’s ever so present in most of us. I have yet to figure out how to fill it, as all the attempts somehow end up back to that hunger. I’m not sure whether it’s a human condition exacerbated by our consumer-centered modern society. But the hunger is real.

Thank you for reading! Have a satiated day ❤