WHEN THE BODY DEVOURS

a horror story of pain with teeth, things that can live inside of us & a hunger turned bloodthirsty

My body is eating me from the inside out. I don’t know when it started. One day I woke up with a hungry monster in my belly, and it began to eat. At first, it must have been taking small bites—small enough not to notice, like when you playfully bite the hand of someone you love. The craving is there, but it isn’t bloodthirsty. You just want a taste. The cautious beginning of something larger, a bloody buffet. The nibbling started on my womb, and the pain was nothing unusual. Something every woman goes through. Nothing to be dramatic about.

But soon, it wasn’t enough. The hunger grew. The monster wanted more. It left the warm, pink embrace of my womb and spread further, feasting on everything it came across. My fallopian tubes. My intestines. A part of my bladder. Who knows where it’s sinking its teeth in right at this moment.

The real pain came later, biting down when the appetite could no longer be satisfied. It was a sunny summer day in an Italian valley. My boyfriend and I were on our way to a waterfall, planning to spend the day on warm rocks, bathing in the glacial water. A sudden pain flared up, and I kept walking. Gritted my teeth. I didn’t want to complain. Didn’t want to be the one to interrupt the plans again because something was wrong.

The pain clawed at me, twisted through my lower belly like a fever dream, climbed to my ribs, coiled around my spine. I felt it hammering, a rhythm that wasn’t mine. I tried to override it with my own. Inhale, exhale. Step after step, climb after climb. My boyfriend pointed out the view, and I agreed with words I had to wrench from the clenched muscles in my belly. Eventually I couldn’t keep it to myself anymore. Could we stop for a moment? I had cramps. Did I need the toilet? No, no. I just needed to sit. It would pass. We sat down by an ancient drinking well, and I dipped my hands in the water, the cold rushing through my body like a shock. You can trick your hungry body into thinking it’s full by drinking lots of water. Maybe this well would quiet the hunger of my own flesh.

“Are you okay?” my boyfriend asked from time to time. I nodded faintly, unsure. Sorry for this, I kept saying. Sorry, I think it’s getting better. I stood up, doubled over again. We stayed there for an hour, and while he quietly admired the landscape, I fought a silent war against my own insides. Something inside me kept eating and eating, until suddenly, the pain stopped—as abruptly as it had begun. The hunger was sated. For now. My boyfriend wanted to go back, worried. But I shook my head. No, we had come too far.

A week later, it began again. No warning. Scraping teeth, great bites taken from my insides, leaving me nauseous. Once could be a coincidence. Twice couldn’t be ignored. Maybe it’s kidney stones, my mother said over the phone as I sat hunched in pain on a park bench. Whenever someone walked by, I tried to sit upright, turned my tear-streaked face away. What if they thought I was being dumped over the phone by a boyfriend? What if they thought I was causing a scene? My mother’s voice sounded far away. Or appendicitis? No, no. I was sure. A monster had moved into my uterus, and it wanted out.

I am lying half-naked under a fluorescent light, a man between my legs holding a long stick that he pushed in with one fluid motion. Wow, he must have a lot of experience, I thought. At that moment, I didn’t wonder why men were allowed in this department. Didn’t ask myself what they could possibly know about wombs and the kind of pain that makes you double over on an ordinary Sunday. What I did wonder was where to direct my gaze. It felt wrong to look the man in the eyes while he was pressing against my uterus, so I closed mine. Did it hurt? he asked. No. I don’t know. I see, he said. Oh, yes, I see.

A moment later, I find myself outside with a pile of papers—vague black-and-white images like the ones proud expectant parents post online. When I’d entered the room, I’d even made a joke about it—an ultrasound image of a baby from the last patient was still on the screen. “Let’s hope it’s not that,” I joked. I should have known better. It wasn’t a baby, but a cyst of six centimeters. It was a flesh-eating monster—one that, at this pace, would ensure there would be no babies in my future at all. The monster was far too hungry for that. It now had a name: endometriosis.

I’m sitting at the kitchen table, hunger raging through my body. When I searched for ways to quiet the monster, the internet had a lot to say. My biggest weapon? Food. Or rather, the absence of it. No gluten, no sugar, no dairy, no alcohol, no caffeine. I know healthy eating can do a lot, but I have no idea how to fill the gaping hole inside myself. My mouth waters when I think of food. Carrot cake. Crisps. Scones with thick, buttery clotted cream. Crusty bread with chocolate sprinkles. Soft brie. Fresh coffee in the morning. Every craving I give into, every hunger I feed, only makes the monster more bloodthirsty. When something has lived inside you this long, it takes over. The hunger of the monster is now mine. I deny myself things until they take up all the space in my mind. My hunger wakes me up and sings me to sleep. I wonder if I truly believe that a diet can make things better or that eating is the last thing I have control over. My kitchen is full of vegetables and gluten-free rice cakes, but I am slowly becoming a drooling animal, nostrils flared, eyes wide and wild with longing. I fantasize about that scene in Game of Thrones, where Daenerys eats a bleeding heart with her bare hands. I imagine how it feels to bite into that tough flesh, to tear off a piece with determined jaws, the blood running down my chin and wrists. Something primal stirs in me, almost erotic. What would it be like to give in to hunger without apologizing once?

Sorry, I say to the doctor. Sorry, but I really don’t want to go on the pill. It’s the only option I’m offered. If I take the pill, I stop menstruating—and if there’s no blood, the monster’s bloodlust fades. It’s the fourth time I’ve had this conversation. No one can tell me why my body is feasting on itself like an unwelcome parasite. Why my organs are fusing into a lump of scar tissue and blood. I persist—there must be a cause of all this, right? What did I do wrong? I persist until I give up. I nod obediently and say oh and ah when they brush off my questions. I just have to learn to live with it. I wonder what the doctor would do if I suddenly started screaming, loud enough to rupture my vocal cords. If I sank my nails into his bald head, unleashed my furious hunger on him? He laughs at me when I mention trying a healthy diet as a possible cure. If you want to cure endometriosis, he says, you have to stop eating altogether. Then you die, and the problem’s solved.

The problem with living with a flesh-eating monster is, you don’t know what to believe anymore.

I trace with my fingers the places where the monster gnaws. My lower back. The right side of my lower belly. I take supplements for an iron deficiency, I do stretches that are supposed to lighten the pain. I worry when we have to go somewhere where I have to stand for too long. Sex hurts. Admitting it to myself hurts worse. I don’t remember the last time my body simply felt okay. I don’t remember how it feels to trust the skin that keeps me together. When my boyfriend asks if I want pizza, I snap that I’m not allowed to eat that, anymore. I have no right to be mad but I am. I’m mad because I was the one who had to sit across from a man who told me: yes, the pill might change your personality. Your libido will drop. You’ll gain weight. You might become moody. Depression is a possible side effect. No, unfortunately, we still know very little about the disease—even though we’ve known of its existence for a hundred years. Even though we know that one in ten women lives with a monster inside them that eats them bit by bit until nothing is left but a battlefield of chewed-up organs.

I’m exhausted from trying. From understanding, from asking questions that don’t get answered. From gnawing on carrots and deep breathing on my yoga mat. From picking up the box of contraceptive pills, turning it over, putting it back down. From hoping every time the pain subsides, just to be caught unawares a day later. From thinking I have control. The hunger pulses in me, whispers, screams. I walk through the bakery aisle of the supermarket and see a chocolate cake. One of those sticky, soft ones with a molten center, almost black and perfectly round. I can’t resist—like I’m hypnotized, I put the cake in my basket, scan it at self-checkout. It feels like everyone’s looking at me, like they can see the forbidden act pulsing off my skin. But they cannot hear the hunger screaming inside, cannot know how it guides my every move. I come home and place the cake on the kitchen table, calm, composed. I sit down, legs tucked under me, and peel open the plastic—sickly-sweet chocolate scent curling into my nostrils. I wait a moment, maybe two, almost convincing myself I can still stop. But I’m already gone. The hunger has taken over. In one motion, I shove both hands into the cake, rip out huge chunks and push them into my mouth, licking the dark chocolate from my fingers in ecstasy. I devour and devour and force it all down without saying sorry once, until the final crumbs are licked clean and I lean back, panting. I listen. There’s nothing. The hunger is quiet. Deep in my lower belly, something stirs. The monster is getting ready.