daily struggles

Hi Noelle,

I saw this when you first posted it and thought it was really well done, but am just now getting around to reviewing it.

First, I am probably unreasonably intrigued by your author's note at the beginning. I think the idea of "intentional mistakes" is almost a poetic oxymoron -- when I do irregular capitalization/grammar in my pieces I tend to put, "the grammatical choices are intentional" rather than mistakes - just because I don't think of it as a mistake I guess? Either way, I thought the punctuation choices where you sometimes left "i" uncapitalized and sometimes capitalized it had a neat effect of showing the speaker sort of waving back and forth in their confidence and self-assurance levels. I also liked how you interspersed really short sentences like "Food is medicine. It tastes delicious. I am not in danger. / I am safe." with longer sentences -- this gave some variety to the piece, but also made it feel more stream of consciousness, because people don't always think in long complex sentences especially when they're threatened or scared.

I also want to commend you for writing a piece that had a lot of vulnerability, but also strength. Not every sad poem or story needs a happy ending, but I do like seeing emotional growth/variety in pieces because I think it's more accurate to true life, and is honestly less draining as a reader to connect to. For instance if a piece is sad from start to finish or filled with fear every step of the way, I sort of pull back from the piece and don't want to connect with the speaker. But if there's even a thread of hope, even if a piece is mostly sad, it makes me want to cheer for the speaker and I lean in to see what happens. Your piece did a great job of this, without being overly optimistic or resolving everything with the eating disorder at the end too.

One critique I had, was I wanted a bit more physical descriptions. We got so much of the mental dialogue, but I felt like we missed a bit of the physical. What type of food is being eaten (more specifically than just meat), what's sitting on the plate? Also I wasn't quite clear where the speaker was, which wasn't that important to the story, but would have helped complete the scene for me. The only real description we get is that the others around them are having a good time - which was a bit vague for me.

An aspect that I thought you communicated really well in this piece, is how when someone's suffering with an eating disorder sometimes it feels like they are literally in a battle with themselves. The couple of friends that I've had who've went through/are going through eating disorders - that's something that always struck me when they'd finally talk about it. How they felt both relieved to not eat/or eat, but also guilty to not eat/ or eat - so there was this double-bind that they were constantly stuck in and it seemed like for them there was just no way out. In this piece I felt that sort of emotion of being stuck and having this internal battle play out came through really well.

Overall, it's a powerful short piece that gives insight into something that isn't talked or written about all that much. Thanks for posting this!

Please let me know if you had any questions about my review or wanted feedback about anything else in it.

~alliyah

Noelle! It's been forever since I've reviewed your writing! And forever since I've reviewed period heh. I'm not sure that there's a ton for me to say in terms of critique, but I'll do my best!

This was a very- I don't want to say interesting read because I feel like it's very personal and saying it was "interesting" seems kinda, almost nosy? But, I found it interesting in that I don't hear a lot about eating disorders. Eating disorders are something that seem to be behind closed doors seemingly more than other disorders- I don't hear people talk about them much! Or, if you do hear about them you never really get real information about them, and what it actually feels like or the different kinds or anything really. So that's why to me it was interesting.

This piece made me feel so... privileged? I eat everyday like it's nothing. In fact, sometimes I feel like I eat wayyyy more then I need! And then reading this it's just really sobering in a sense because it's so hard to even imagine what it would be like to be afraid of something that your body needs every. single. day. Like if you're terrified of heights- no biggy, just don't jump out of planes and such. And I'm not saying that eating disorders are comparable to random fears/phobias.

I really liked how this ending on a positive note. I honestly thought it was going to end with something akin to a panic attack- or something, I don't know. So it was really nice to see the narrator overcome that moment of panic and talk themselves out of it and continue on! That's so cool! I especially like it because often we can't tell at all what someone's internal struggles are, and this is a prime example of... witnessing what someone might go through on a daily basis?- something that someone eating at the same table as that person might not even realise what's going on. And so I think it's a good reminder for people to remember that we don't know what each other is dealing with each day- who knows, really!

I also liked the use of no caps when the narrator was in the more panicked state- so when they were the "other self". It definitely did give the sort of... unhinged feel that I think you were going for. And then the caps when they were in a more calm state.

Anyway, I'm sorry I didn't have much in the way or critique-esque-ness! But hopefully this was somewhat helpful or something!

-Holysocks