It is not easy to find a visual representation of a lack of something. That is why Sartre book covers are so boring.

I have always been, as they say, a good eater, but I never thought that it was at the core of my being. Now I’m not so sure.

Certainly I have had the flu many times before, and while it’s always awful, I’m usually so nauseous that I don’t have the time to pause and reflect upon my lack of appetite. What happened on Sunday and Monday was different. I didn’t feel sick to my stomach (though that came later—a virus, maybe, or a latent Mexican souvenir), but I simply wasn’t hungry. It was startling. I’m almost always hungry. In the abstract, that doesn’t sound so bad (it sounds more like an ideal diet), but I’m not exaggerating when I say that I was completely unsettled by it. I wandered around aimlessly on my lunch break, confused by this sudden non-wanting. It was as though a thrumming engine that is always purring inside of me had dropped away. It was almost a relief when I started feeling ill; a presence rather than an absence.

Perhaps you find it silly or frivolous that I am equating a greedy desire for food with a cherished personality trait. But aren’t we all, to some extent, defined by our wants? They’re the heartbeats beneath our most vital decisions: this person or that person, Cleveland Indians or Cincinnati Reds, drama club or football team, crunchy or creamy.People are more vivid when they make their choices lustily, with conviction. (I saw a young woman on the train today wearing a Star Wars t-shirt with stretch pants and a sort of Navajo-patterned cardigan, and she was owning it.) Without an appetite, I felt like a pastel version of myself, less propelled through my day and, frankly, less interesting.

Is this what it feels like for all those people out there who simply don’t care about food? Probably not; they probably long ago filled that space in their lives with something else, even if they didn’t conceive of it as such. It did, actually, leave more time in my day: that mid-day wandering and the lack of planning for future meals. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, usually the anchors of my day, flying away from me like birds. Maybe some people find that liberating.

But I, for one, am relieved that my appetite is coming back, bit by bit, a timid creature returning. This morning I looked up a restaurant’s menu, just out of curiosity, and felt a flume of joy when the description of one of the dishes made my mouth water. I cannot yet bear the thought of drinking coffee, but the beautiful smell of it makes my heart beat faster.

It’s possible that this is all an elaborate excuse for why there is no new recipe this week. But don’t worry, dear readers. I’m about to eat a sandwich, and I already feel more like myself.