Dead Letters: The Hunger They Never Noticed

“Some daughters learn to disappear

before they ever learn how to live.”

There are still nights

I catch myself sucking in my stomach

while completely alone.

No one there.

No eyes on me.

No danger.

And still

my body remembers.

That’s the terrifying thing about certain griefs.

They outlive the people who caused them.

They settle into muscle.

Into posture.

Into the way a woman apologizes

before asking for water.

Dear “To the silence you left behind,”

I need you to understand something

I could never say out loud without shaking:

I was a child

while all of this was happening to me.

A child.

And children do not naturally look into mirrors

with hatred in their mouths.

Someone places it there.

Someone teaches them

that love becomes warmer

the smaller they are.

I remember standing in bathroom light

so, pale it made me look ghostlike,

turning sideways over and over,

pinching skin between my fingers

like I was trying to remove evidence

of myself.

I remember hunger headaches

that felt almost comforting after a while.

The dizziness.

The cold hands.

The strange thrill of being empty.

Do you know how sick that is?

To feel proud

because your body is losing the war against you.

I told myself it was discipline.

Control.

Dedication.

But it wasn’t.

It was grief with good posture.

It was a little girl

trying to carve herself into something

that might finally deserve gentleness.

And God

I tried.

I danced until my vision blurred at the edges.

Until my feet throbbed inside satin shoes

like two frightened hearts.

I smiled through exhaustion so severe

my jaw ached afterward from pretending.

People clapped for me.

That’s the part that still makes me nauseous.

They called me graceful

while I was quietly disappearing in front of them.

Nobody asks ballerinas

if they are happy.

They ask how much they weigh.

How high they can lift their leg.

How long they can endure pain

without ruining the illusion.

So, I became an illusion.

Fragile.

Beautiful.

Starving.

The perfect daughter is often just

the saddest one in the room

who learned to stay silent about it.

I kept waiting for someone to notice.

Not my body

my suffering.

There is a difference.

I wanted someone to look at me

and say:

you do not have to hurt yourself

to deserve love here.

But nobody said it.

And after enough silence,

the body begins translating abandonment

as truth.

I thought maybe if I became extraordinary enough,

you would finally hold me gently.

If I won competitions.

If I stayed thin.

If I stopped crying.

If I became less complicated.

Less emotional.

Less human.

I spent years trying to become digestible.

Do you understand what that does to a soul?

To constantly edit yourself

for fear your rawness will make people leave.

I am angry now.

Not loud angry.

Not throwing-plates angry.

The worse kind.

The kind that sits quietly beside you at 3 a.m.

and finally tells the truth.

I was never hard to love.

I was simply surrounded by people

who only understood love

when it arrived convenient, silent, and easy to manage.

And children are not supposed to earn tenderness.

They are supposed to be held

without auditioning for it first.

That realization broke me.

Then rebuilt me.

Because now

when I look at old photographs of myself

I don’t see a difficult girl anymore.

I see a starving one.

Starving for reassurance.

Starving for softness.

Starving for someone to notice

that beneath all the discipline and elegance

was a child slowly collapsing inward.

And the cruelest part?

She still said thank you

while disappearing.

I mourn her often.

The girl counting almonds in dim kitchens.

The dancer stretching aching muscles at midnight

because she believed rest had to be earned.

The daughter who kept mistaking survival

for strength.

I want to reach backward through time

and hold her face in my hands.

I want to tell her:

You were never too much.

They were simply unequipped

to love someone as deeply feeling as you.

And maybe that is why I write now.

Because writing is the only place

where I no longer reduce myself

to keep others comfortable.

On paper,

I finally take up the whole room.

—A.

Some girls survive by becoming beautiful enough to ignore. Some women heal by refusing to disappear again.

© 2025 Alessandra Graziella Di ’Stefano. All rights reserved.

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