Starving Shell~A metaphor story
(Author Unknown...sorry)


I am the salt snail sitting inside the storm.
The world is crumbling around me, but I’m safe in my hard shell. Shell made of salt.
This shell is almost impossible to break and I can barely feel the rocks that fall on me. And that’s the way I like it.
But I’m so isolated… alone…
Hungry inside my shell.
So hungry….
Some days I contemplate leaving, risking the stormy world to find some warmth… a home…
Some days I even venture out…
But I’ll always go crawling back to my shell. I can’t take the risk of pain.
But it hurts more than you’d ever know inside the starving shell, the salt walls corrode me.
But this is my pain, my pain that only I know, and I can tolerate it.
Maybe there’s another snail like me out there, sometimes I dream I find him. But I don’t want to know him. He can have his shell, I will have my own.
I imagine my life without that salt, it just seems foreign to me. What if I left the shell forever?
Some day I wish to be so corroded I crumble from view, after all, what else do I have to hope for?

It’s dark in here, and cold… oh so very cold. Sometimes my bones shake, although I’m not sure if I have bones.
It seems these days I’m androgenous. My sex left me long ago. And I like that.

I am the snail.
I live in the starving shell with walls of salt.
I am the snail of androgeny.

I hope to disappear, but it seems the more corroded I am the more I stick out, and I wonder…is that my aim?
Maybe I want the world to see me disappear? Maybe that’s the real reason I leave my shell sometimes, although… that means I will never truly leave. Which mean there is no hope for me but to become completely corroded.
If I die in my shell will they find me then?
Will the shell break?
If I leave will it ever leave me?
Will it haunt me forever?
I know my questions cannot be answered unless I move, but I’m frozen.
It’s grown too cold in here.
Too cold to move. Too cold to smile. Too cold to laugh…
I’ve forgotten how to live.
I can smell the world outside and I ache for it.
But my attempts have not quietened the hunger.
So hungry inside my shell.
So lonely…
No one wants to know, anyway, it’s not very interesting. Nothing but a shell with walls of salt.
I’m sure there are those who wonder why I will not leave?
I wish I knew.
Maybe I’ll live someday,
But for now I’m in the,
Safety,
Familiar surroundings.
I’m home.

I am the snail in the starving shell with walls of salt.
But the storm is inside, no longer out.

This is a perfect metaphore for living with an ED...so lonley, so cold and hungry. Thanks for posting this here!

Love,
Dara