The Hollow Hunger

It had been six years since her world quietly collapsed. A slow, suffocating silence that follows death when the world forgets, yet you still remember. Every morning and every night. She wore her widowhood like a second skin, one that couldn’t be peeled off or outgrown. It had dulled her senses, her spirit, and even her sense of who she was. Friends had stopped checking in and sympathetic support had vanished. Life was moving on but she remained stuck. She mourned inside which kept her life on pause, muffled and a bit blurred.

One evening, something inside her cracked. Feeling inspired and empowered by her recent self-transformations, she felt ready. Ready to make a decision (an irreversible decision) to reopen the doors of living and make a grand re-entrance into the world that was left behind. She had downloaded a dating app. Her hands trembling as she searched and uploaded an acceptable photograph and cleverly scripted introduction of who she was and what she was looking for.

The matches came quickly and often. She had never received so much attention and interest. Honestly, she was a bit baffled. She didn’t even care what was said. In that moment, it was the red dots, the “you’ve got a message,” the ping of attention that provided the jolt for her dopamine fix.

At first, it was innocent. Conversations, witty banter, and compliments. But soon, her worth began to feel quantifiable by the eagerness in the men’s texts, in the hunger in their eyes, and eventually, the urgency of their hands. She told herself it was harmless. That she deserved to feel again. But something deeper stirred—a dark hunger. Not for connection, but for validation.

Anthony was the first. After a few exchanged messages, they met at local coffee shop one afternoon. His thick Italian accent cutting through the steam of espresso and the chill of her solitude. She didn’t understand most of what he said, but his lips, both deliberate and electric, became a language she would learn to understood very well. The first kiss happened immediately and caught her off-guard, but the lingering sensation in her lips had awakened a deep desire for more.

The second date led her to a late, stormy Saturday night at a dance club.They talked and danced the night away. The time had crossed over to the next day and the bar was now closing. He had invited her to follow him to an undisclosed location and she unwittingly agreed. As he pulled his vehicle into a locked and gated car repair shop in middle of a dark, desolate industrial area, a cautioned and whispered voice told her to keep driving. She knew very little of this man of mystery with the strong and tantalizing lips.

She did, however, know he was married. He tried to hide it, but not very well. He was discreet and eager with his intentions, and she fed off the thrill of being wanted in secret. Her stormy night ghosting did not end his pursuit. It might have made it stronger. He messaged the next day and the next that had turned into voice calling which made the connection even more personal. He invited her to meet him at his weekly Monday night bocci ball tournaments. As he instructed her to do, she sat at a table alone; keeping a safe distance from him and his secret. But their eyes frequently made contact and was consumed with an intensity that became impossible to ignore. Like clockwork, after the hour and an half game, their encounter culminated into the front seat of her car with fervid and impassioned kissing and fondling. He was granted access to cross the boundaries of the fabric that layered atop her skin and eventually she found herself crossing the threshold that stood beyond that security gate.

Their encounters were quick and mechanical. She told herself it didn’t mean anything as a way to shield her heart from disappointment, yet she still left every rendezvous feeling both full and hollow. Her body had become a bargaining chip that she offered in exchange for a fleeting echo of worth.

Next came Chad. Tall and charming with a swagger masked by cheeky emojis and late-night “you up?” messages. He rarely called, made no real efforts or plans, but when he messaged — it was like a fix. His words burned through her screen like a drug: suggestive, magnetic, dangerous. He sexted like it was performance art, and she always took the bait. He made her feel beautiful, desired and dirty. But never real. This was merely masks and mirrors.

She caught glimpses of her reflection after each liaisons in the rearview mirror of her car—the smeared lipstick, messy hair, her empty eyes. There was a flicker of shame that passed through her, but she learned to bury it with perfume and inauthentic smiles.

The signs were all there. The guilt.. the discontent. The gnawing suspicion that this wasn’t her healing, it was self-erasure disguised as liberation which she ignored. She wanted to feel good even at the expense of betraying her soul. Her body became an altar to which she offered herself, hoping the gods of attention and desire would deliver salvation. But it never came. Instead only silence, sweat and regret.

After each rushed encounter with Anthony, and hastened and meaningless sext from Chad, she slowly began awakening to the weight of her recent choices. She was starting to realize this wasn’t who she was; it was who she had become. Somewhere beneath the ruin, a whisper tried to form. A plea not for attention, but for truth and something real. Not necessarily from them but from herself.

Then came Marcus. He was fourteen years older. Obviously from a different time and different rhythm of life. He carried himself like a man who had seen storms and chose silence over chaos. She wasn’t looking for him but for some reason he found her.

They met at a small restaurant tucked behind a strip mall — neutral territory for a “Widows and Widowers Connection” meetup. She had talked herself out of attending the past 3 months, but this month she wouldn’t allow herself to back out. There was something about group grief that made her skin crawl, like standing naked in a room full of broken mirrors. But a whisper in her ear and nudge in her chest told her to just go. Try. And so, she did.

Marcus was there too; his first time as well. He sat alone at the end of the long table, eyes scanning the menu but not really reading. When their eyes met, it wasn’t lightning. It was something slower. It was recognition. As if somewhere deep in the souls, they already knew each other.

Their conversation started with small familiar things. Loss. Loneliness. The strange world that emerges after death takes someone you loved. But quickly, it turned and veered into the kinds of truths people don’t usually tell strangers. They both laughed at how awkward they felt being there. How surreal it was to be meeting people again, like trying on a life that no longer quite fit. There was something about him. Something that pulled. Was it the shared grief or was it deeper? It was a strange magnetism, even in silence.

As their connection deepened, so did her curiosity. Marcus was quiet, but not in a peaceful way. He was guarded and shadowed. His actions rarely matched his words. He was somewhat of a recluse. He often teetered between being deeply affectionate and suddenly withdrawn, and she understood that very well. She was starting to see herself in him.

So she ignored the red flags. The way he dodged certain questions. The inconsistencies in his stories. His attention, the softness, the gifts, the moments of raw vulnerability felt ingenuine and fake. For nearly two years, their involvement was intimate and private. She told herself it was sacred that way, something too delicate to put on display. But in truth, it was hidden because she was too ashamed for it to be seen.

He gave her the affection she sought, yes. Words, promises and even gifts that made her feel chosen finally.But they were all empty.

Then, slowly, she began to rise. She turned inward. Began to heal, to create, to remember who she was before her loneliness tried to rewrite her. She started seeking light — not in others, but in herself. And the more she glowed, the dimmer Marcus became.

He drifted. Quietly into someone else’s arms. Into the life she once desired with him but he never truly offered to her. That life that was never meant for her to claim.

So she grieves again. Not for the man but for the part of herself she gave — the part that had wanted so badly to be seen, to be held, and to be kept. This time the grief was different. She knew it wasn’t her brokenness that made her love, it was her hopeful vulnerability.

The Mirror of Repetition

It wasn’t until she stood alone again — stripped of Marcus’s half-hearted love, the adrenaline of fleeting flings, and the noise of external validation — that the patterns began to emerge.

There had always been a thread that subtly wove through the grief, but also flowed deeper and more ingrained. It was a yearning to be chosen. A need to be enough for someone who ironically didn’t yet know how to be enough for herself.

She had called it connection, yet often mistaken it for fate. What she was really chasing… was herself. Each man had been a mirror—not of love, but of her wounds.

Anthony, with his hungry lips and married secrets, mirrored her desperation for attention. He didn’t love her; he never even really saw her. But he made her feel desirable for a moment. She traded her integrity for that moment. Over and over. She told herself she was in control, but truthfully, she was starving—and he was just a quick fix.

Chad gave her the thrill of being pursued, of feeling wanted in the spaces where her loneliness echoed loudest. But he was never really there. His presence was conditional and fleeting. His desire was a game and she willingly played along because something in her believed she had to earn love with availability, with skin, and with silence.

Marcus was the illusion of stability. The one she thought could last. But he was only a more elegant echo of the same wound. He was the man who drew her in with vulnerability but lived in emotional exile. He kept her close enough to feel special, yet far enough to remain unaccountable. She had mistaken his brokenness for depth. She thought her love could soften his armor, but she was never meant to be his rescue—she was meant to learn that love doesn't come with locks and shadows.

Now she remains standing in the ashes of the roles she kept repeating.

The pleaser.

The fixer.

The woman who disappeared so someone else would stay.

She cried for the versions of herself who did not know better. The woman who begged for breadcrumbs and called it a feast. Who had offered her body when her soul longed for companionship. Who had stayed silent while her spirit was screaming.

But her tears were not defeat; they were a release. They were not her reckoning. They were her rising.

She began to see that it was never really about the men. It was about the spaces inside her that had gone untended for too long. The little girl who never learned to ask for what she needed. The young woman who learned that being wanted was more important than being respected. The widow who had mistaken emptiness for failure, and intimacy for salvation.

She knows now these patterns do not break by will alone. They unravel only when we stop lying to ourselves. When we sit with the ache instead of rushing to fill it. When we choose truth — even when it’s lonely. Especially when it’s lonely.

She knows she hasn’t healed yet, not fully, but she is now awake. And for the first time, that is enough.

A Letter to the Woman I Was

Dear You,

I’ve waited so long to write this. Longer than I should have. But you had to live through it all first — the ache, the collapse, the unraveling.

The men who never stayed.

The love that never landed.

The way you kept offering your heart (and body) as if it was currency to be spent for mere scraps of affection.

I see you now. How hard you tried. How deeply you loved. How you convinced yourself that if you were beautiful enough, quiet enough, agreeable enough, then maybe… just maybe… someone would come in and stay.

You didn’t know then that being chosen by someone else means nothing if you keep abandoning yourself. You weren’t weak. You were grieving. Not just your husband, but the life you thought you’d have. The safety of being known. The comfort of having someone to come home to. The future that died with him. In that grief, you forgot that you were still whole. Still worthy and still home. So you ran…

Into the arms of Anthony, who gave you heat but not warmth.

Into the games of Chad, who saw you as a fantasy, but not a person.

Into the quiet shadow of Marcus, who mirrored your pain but couldn’t carry it.

You desired all of them from an unhealed place. That is not shameful. That’s human. But you don’t live there anymore. You are not that woman anymore. She needed to learn to survive and she did. Now its time for you to thrive.

You no longer mistake attention for love. You no longer confuse longing with loyalty. You are no longer afraid to be alone because you are learning to enjoy and find love in your own being.

You light candles for yourself.

You make your own coffee and smile in the quietness.

You write.

You walk barefoot and pull the dandelions in the grass.

You no longer need someone else to make you feel real and loved.

Should love find its way again, it will meet you here. Not in your wounds, but in your wholeness. You are not too much. You never were. You just needed to come home to yourself.

With love,

The woman you’ve become