Healthy. My relationship with the word is complicated—often confusing to those around me, since my most instinctive association with it is negative.

Why? Because it was shaped by abuse. The first time I used the word in reference to myself, I was fifteen and trying to get in shape, trying to eat “healthy.” At that age, it meant something narrow and warped. Lettuce was healthy. A rice cake was healthy. A burger was healthy—if I believed my parents when they told me it only had 100 calories.

The word became a kind of violent permission. I would shout at my parents: “Is it healthy?” or “It’s not healthy—I can’t eat that.” Fear, confusion, ignorance—all of it got swept under that one word.

Later, after rehab, “healthy” took on a second meaning. People would say, “You look so healthy,” which confirmed what I feared most: I had gained weight. I was fat.

Of course, that’s a grave exaggeration. I had gained weight, but I was not fat. Still, to know my body had changed enough to be noticed—when I already felt uneasy in it—made me want to retreat. Back to the habits that kept people quiet. No one commented on my weight when I was unnaturally thin—healthy or not.

Can my relationship with this word—one that’s been as abused and redefined as my body—be repaired? Maybe. Maybe under a kind of rebranding. Not as a rule, but as a feeling.

What I mean is this: instead of projecting the word onto something—a food, a body, a lifestyle—maybe we let it exist without definition. Maybe healthy is less about what we name and more about what we don’t. Because when we label, we assume. And we don’t know what’s going on in someone’s life. Whether they’re happy, depressed, dealing with an illness, or carrying something private behind closed doors.

I caught myself thinking about this last Friday, after dinner with a close friend—someone who’s also had a complicated relationship with food. It was, in fact, a point of connection when we first met. But at our table that night, there was no salad. No raw vegetables. No plain food. There was bread. Butter. Pasta with clams. Seared fish with spinach.

What struck me was how much we enjoyed the meal. There was no concern, no calculation. We talked. We ate. If there was tension or stress it came from the conversation, not the food on our plates.

This, to me, is healthy.