Food Poisoning for 6 days! #CharacterDevelopment

I recently had food poisoning for six days, and it taught me a thing or two about life. For the first couple of days, I tried not eating much and sticking to plain foods, but my symptoms got worse. I had tests. The doctor advised me not to eat at all for 48 hours. I did, and after 36 hours I improved. Yay! For the next couple of days, I only ate bread and water (with electrolytes). It was pretty miserable, but by the end of six days I was finally eating again, still avoiding certain foods but able to sate my hunger.

A couple of decades prior, when I had been backpacking around the Galapagos on a cheap boat, my husband and I discovered that the crew had been turning the fridge off at night to save money. But we only made that discovery on the last day. By the time we got to our next stop, an isolated cabin in the middle of the Amazon jungle, we were very ill. Luckily for us, a couple of young Swiss nurses were also backpacking, and they told us to eat dry crackers and drink full-fat coke. It worked! We were back to exploring South America within a couple of days.

However, a couple of days is a lot less than these recent six. And with two days in the middle where I couldn’t eat a thing, I had never been so hungry in my life. I thought about food all day: what I would eat when I was better, how it would taste, how the textures would feel in my mouth, what textures I would try first, I even bought foods ready for when I could celebrate eating again. I dreamt of eating, and would wake up grinding and clenching my teeth, which then lead to an inflammation in my jaw and I ended up in hospital with a jaw subluxation (partial dislocation) – I’m still recovering from that!

But…

Six days is also a lot less than six weeks, six months, six years… Some people grow up hungry. My dad grew up hungry. Born in 1925, he grew up during the Great Depression and his family was so poor he used to steal peas off his siblings’ plates when they weren’t looking. He had to leave school at 12 to support the family, getting a job in a fish and chip shop. At least he could finally eat!

He went on to become a cook, in the navy, then in various hotels, restaurants and catering companies. Over time, he grew into his skin, then expanded around the waist! But it wasn’t until my recent six-days of food poisoning that I could truly reflect on what it might have been like to grow up hungry.

It would certainly impact a person’s psyche, giving them a (subconscious or conscious) desire to ensure they were never hungry again – just as Scarlett O’Hara declares in Gone With The Wind, when she returns to Tara to find her home plundered:

“I’ll never be hungry again! No, nor any of my folk! If I have to lie, steal, cheat, or kill, as God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!”

The idea of starvation impacting a person’s psyche then prompted me to wonder what other hungers might do the same, and I came up with a list – a person might hunger for:

• Health/food
• Security/stability/safety
• Independence/freedom
• Money/resources/opportunity
• Affection/connection
• Recognition/attention
• Respect/status

There are probably others too, but being significantly starved of any one of these would surely impact a person.

As a parent, once I conceived this list, I immediately considered whether I was starving my own children in any way. The only things I ever want impacting them are their own personalities, interests and motivations.

I also reflected back on my own childhood, and it was interesting to examine how the hungers I had been exposed to as a child affected decisions I made throughout my early adulthood. Now that I’m more mature(!), I would like to think I can provide most of these things to myself, so hopefully my decisions are wiser and more considered now.

But just as interestingly, as a writer, I can now use this knowledge when developing characters. Most main characters have wounds in their past, and I’ve long enjoyed writing from that perspective.

But wounds can happen in an instant. Starvation takes time.

What about you – what were you starved of as a child, how did it affect your early adulthood, and are you still impacted? What about your favourite characters – what starvations (most likely) made them hungry for the lives they now lead?