For more than two decades of Janet Leung’s life, hunger replaced her joy.
After losing her father, endless food maths filled her head, drowning out other thoughts. Her anxiety around eating kept others at a distance.
Miserable as she was, Leung could not give up this distraction; it offered an escape from the sideways glances and judgment that she endured in her youth. Hidden inside the grown-up was a 16-year-old girl, stuck in an environment that demanded perfection.
Patching a ‘broken window’
One Hong Kong night, when she was 14, Leung woke to a world without her father.
Her mother had roused her after an urgent call from the hospital. Leung did not want to get up – she had become accustomed to late-night trips to her father’s bedside in case it was time to say goodbye – but this time, she arrived to news that he had already gone.
A blank feeling overcame Leung, and she wondered why her family friends were crying more than she was.
Before he died, her father had told the family to live their lives as they normally would. Leung and her sisters departed for a Canadian boarding school in the months following.
His death was like a “broken window in her home”. She had lost her father, her protector and her connection to food in a single blow, and would carry her grief deep inside as she grew into adulthood.