Bike ride

A few nights ago I was biking home drunk from the house of a boy who "loves me but just isn't sexually attracted" because barbaraholm.com. On my way I stopped at a store, parked my bike, with the intention of buying ice cream and a frozen pizza and eating all of it.... throw up food, you get it... I even locked up my bike, but after crying in the parking lot for a minute, I got back on my bike and went home, without going in, passing up on the opportunity to binge and purge. I couldn't have done that a year ago. I made a choice not to fall off the wagon. I choose to be strong, because I wanted to. It was a hard moment for me, and even more difficult to admit, because if I admitted I had that capacity to make the choice for myself, I was letting everyone down every time I had fallen off the wagon and every time I may fall off it in the future. I was afraid if I told people this entire time I have had the willpower, that everyone would be mad at me for every time I have fallen and every time I will again. But, I am on the wagon for me, and no one will be mad the next time I fall off. The only one I will be letting down, really, is myself.

Not good

I haven't successfully eaten solid food since Saturday. Whenever I try to put solids in my mouth I start gagging. I've been getting enough calories by drinking juice, smoothies and soup, but it's frustrating how simultaneously terrified and physically nauseous food is making me. Yesterday I tried to eat a bowl of rice and beans and I could only get one bite down before I ran to the bathroom to throw it back up. I'm not using my fingers or gagging myself on purpose; I'm just so crippled by anxiety that I can't swallow solid foods. It's like all of my anxiety is trapped in my throat and stomach and anything more dense than a smoothie can't make it's way down.

I just got dumped on Saturday, and that always seems to be a trigger for the anorexia. Hey, silver linings playbook, at least it's not bulimia! It's very pathetic that I count that as a win. I hate that my anxieties seem to fail the bechdel test. I hate that I am so desperate for the love of a man, and unrequitted love can ruin my life. I wish I were stronger.

I'm not starving myself on purpose; in fact I wish I could eat more. I'm not trying to diet or imposing restrictions. I'm just so wound up and full of tension that I literally can't fit any solids inside of me. I'm scared that I'm going to start throwing up everything again, especially when I try to eat anything.

I feel like I have this thick, giant, dark presence inside of me, like a swirling dark sludge of pain and anxiety, wound so tightly around itself that I can barely breathe, pressing against my heart and ribs. I'm barely eating but I constantly am gagging, trying to get the darkness out of me. I don't think I can handle this much anxious tension. I just want to puke or shit all of the angry pain out of me. It hurts to breathe.

I feel like this a lot in moments of unrequitted love. In this case, I suppose the love was reciprocated, but I drove him away, sabotaged everything, because I wasn't ready to be with anyone, to be loved, because I still needed (and wanted) to work on myself. For some reason, I just feel like I'll never be capable of being in a romantic relationship without fucking it up. I worry that there's something about me so evil and intrinsically unloveable that I'll always hurt everyone I care about and I'll always be a burden on my friends. I'm so evil that I can't have any relationships without hurting the one I love. Everyone I care about would be happier if I just disappeared from existence.

How to get your life back in order, Barbara

How to get your life back in order, Barbara

(Please adjust the list and make your own based on your own needs/ desires)

1. Clean Room
2. Start running
3. Put more attention and drive into comedy career
4. Do nice things for friends and family, make gifts for them
5. Smoke pot to help with the not eating stuff
6. Makeover
7. Buy soup and fruit and soft easy to eat foods
8. Organize room
9. Make to do lists
10. Produce more comedy/ art

I do want to get better

I had been doing really well with not throwing up for about a week. I was eating really healthy and keeping myself busy and writing a lot and producing a lot of art. My stress was starting to build in my every day life as I prepared to move and got worried about an important show I was doing, and as it did so I was placing more importance on food. On Monday my friend bought me a slice of cheese pizza, just one small slice, and I gobbled it up and drunkenly threw it up. The pizza represented my stress and tension and getting it out of my body was a sigh of relief. As soon as I had relapsed, on some level I was like, "Well fuck it, I might as well just enjoy myself." Pizza party for one!

For that week I binged and purged like it was going out of style, (which it did a long time ago, when I was 14 and The Craft was no longer cool.) I ate cheesy carbohydrates and dense food and even healthy food and threw it up. Friday I ate two slices of pizza, threw them up, two more slices, threw them up, and then ate a small bean and cheese burrito, and threw it up. I was shaking and barely got to sleep. Not sleeping just made it worse. I was full of dark angry tension pressing against the inside of my skin.

When I woke up the next morning my entire body hurt. I felt weak and shakey. I was probably dehydrated, malnourished, and anemic from purging so much. I felt very faint and guilty and self loathing for the purging. I went and got a salad at a bar. Then at the bar I got into a text message fight with a close friend. I was attempting to tell him how much pain I was in and how sick I felt but he just got mad at me for falling off the wagon. (Or as he probably saw it cannon ball leaping off the wagon.) I said some things I didn't mean. I felt so guilty I ended up throwing up a spinach salad. How pathetic am I that my eating disorder won't let me eat spinach? Guilt is such a big trigger for me with food. I feel awful about the way I treat my loved ones all the time and I feel like I'm full of badness and the only way to get that badness out is to throw up.

Saturday night I went out with a girlfriend and she told me that she heard of someone who died in their 50s after being bulimic for 30 years.

"Wait," I interrupted, "How did she die?"
"From bulimia."
"No, but how? Like how?"
"...Babs I don't want to scare you."
"Like I get that people die from anorexia. But how did she die from bulimia?" I insistently asked.
"From an eroded esophagus."

My hands went to my throat and I started crying really hard.

"Babs, I'm just telling you this because it's what could happen, and I don't want it to happen to you," Veronica grabbed my hand across the table while tears fell down onto my shirt. "But it's so far down the road. She had been doing it for 30 years."
"So I'm 1/3 of the way there," I said.

I started when I was 12, not bragging. (Can someone say child prodigy?) It didn't make sense to me that people could die from this coping mechanism that helped me control my anxiety. I knew people died from anorexia, but I am not anorexic. (I mean, sometimes I dabble, but I'm just a hobbyist.) The idea that this will probably be the thing that kills me at a young age scared me so much. I started worrying that my body was dying.

I looked up some of the effects of bulimia and it shook me to my core. In addition to the things like weak muscles, organ damage, hair loss, osteoperosis, stomach ulcers, and esophagus failure, there were psychological effects as well. Bulimia was thought to cause mood changes, depression, anxiety, avoidance of others, out of control feelings, and an obsession with food. Bulimia was causing all the emotional problems I thought it was helping me cope with. Even though I knew how bad it was, the recent binge purge relapse had made me feel amazing. I know this sounds stupid that I at 26 was figuring out that my eating disorder was bad for me. That's it. There's no but. I know this sounds stupid. End of statement.

I think the reality that death was the end of this road really affected me. I haven't thrown up since then. I keep telling myself I'll never throw up again. I ate healthy food with lots of vitamins yesterday and I didn't throw up or use laxatives. I know I'll probably fall off the wagon again, but I just need to remember to get right back on it. I can't be like, "Oh see you later wagon! I get a free pass to succumb to my darkest impulses! And not just the Buffy watching in a duck costume by myself ones!"

Now I haven't thrown up in two days. I feel a bit better. If you're recovering from bulimia, you might relapse, but you have to just forgive yourself, not succumb to guilt, because that makes it worse. You have to get right back up on the wagon.

My friend taught me this trick called "playing the tape" where when you have the urge to give in to an addiction you remember what happened the last time you did and what the outcome is. Like "If I have one bite of this pizza...I fall into this dark pit." I've been really good lately with eating fruit and veggies and keeping them down.

I do not want to die from this. And I don't want anyone else to die from it either.

Introduction

The first time I threw up I was 11. I had never even heard of bulimia and I wasn't even aware of what I was doing. My family was fighting at dinner, and I was internalizing it and growing anxious. I let all the stress build up in my stomach while I ate. I focused on what I was eating; the food grew in importance as it grew in my stomach. I became increasingly sick feeling while my parents yelled at each other. That dinner ended with my dad accidentally hitting my hand with his fork; it started bleeding. My dad sobbed with anger and guilt and stormed out, stayed at a hotel and he didn't speak to us for a few months. At 11 years old, I stood alone in my bathroom, looked in the mirror, and threw up. I purged all of the feelings of tension and anxiety out of my body. It felt so good. I cried with relief after I threw up. The only thing that's ever felt as good is an orgasm, and I've had way less of those. (Laaaaadies.)

My dad had left because my hand cut was pretty scary, subsequently our family almost broke up because of me. I became intensely guilty of existing, nervous that I was hurting people, ruining the lives of my friends and family. I couldn't handle the shame spiral, a dark downward wave of overwhelming demonic power, keeping me cloaked in darkness. The only way to get the guilt out of me was to throw up. I used it as a coping mechanism for being around people, especially my loved ones.

I threw up several times a week from age 11 to 21. I tried a few times to stop throwing up. But holding the tension in made me want to scream or cut myself. It made me want to curl into a ball and yell into my knees. I needed the bad feelings out. It felt like there was an oozing black smoggy monster inside of me that was pressing against the outter walls of my skin and bones, stretching and pushing at my organs. I was full of evil and I wanted it out of me.

After college I got a therapist. I totally recommend therapy. I got to the point where I would only throw up once every two months. I was doing way better. But I still binge ate when I was stressed; I still looked at food like it represented my feelings; but I wasn't purging as much. It was a step in the right direction, but I was by no means healed.

This December I lost my job, my boyfriend, my apartment. My two best friends and roommates moved to LA, and I moved back in with my parents. I grew more depressed and lonely. I had very few friends. I was miserable, dissatisfied with  myself as a writer, myself as a friend and a person. I ran away from my hometown and moved to a different state to escape some of these feelings. And when I did that, I had to say goodbye to my therapist.

Living in a new city, not having a job, not knowing a lot of people, and not having a therapist, left me with no ability to cope with my anxiety. Then I fell in love.. It was unrequitted (surprise!) And I felt so guilty for being around him, for bothering him after he rejected me. It was the exact same feeling as how I felt with my dad. I felt full of evil.

As if it had never left, my bulimia came back. After a few months of not having a therapist I fell hard off whatever semblance of a wagon I had been riding. I had no coping mechanisms for my anxiety. I ate cheesy condensed carbohydrates and candy and I threw them up, and it felt amazing. My career spun out of control in the new city as far as getting so many opportunities and feeling stress about failing them. I increasingly lonely in the new town, and I felt guilt whenever I tried to be around people. I got so that I was throwing up at least once a day. Then I got so I could barely keep down any solid foods. I had to force myself to drink a lot of soup and smoothies.

I knew what I was doing was wrong but I couldn't stop. I was so tightly wound with guilt and hating myself for being sick only made me feel more shame. I started getting very frequent panic attacks. They felt like I couldn't breathe, no matter how much air I got in. My heart would beat so fast I thought my chest would explode. I sort of could barely move when I got them. It just felt like my entire existence was crippled by the dark evil splooge inside of my stomach and heart. I started getting really bad suicidal thoughts when I had my panic attacks.

I really wanted to get better, but at the same time, I needed my bulimia. The aforementioned unrequitted love forced me to go back to therapy. I'm in the process of recovery right now. I am by no means better, but I am working towards it. I'm now throwing up about two times a week, and counting downwards!

If you have bulimia or anorexia, I am SO sorry. I know it hurts and it's awful. You are not alone. If you read this far (and thank you for taking the time) maybe you probably want to get better. I'm not better, but I'm trying, and it's all I think about, so I can share what I'm learning.

GO TO A THERAPIST! You'll find one that you can afford. DO IT!
Drink alcohol less, it is a depressant and the next day it causes anxiety
Exercise a few times a week, don't overdo it.
MEDITATE this really helps
If you feel panicky, accept the thoughts, let them wash over you and then pass you by.
Do breathing exercises.
Spend time in nature.
Sleep seven to eight hours a night.
Every time you want to do something like throw up, instead do something nice or text a friend a kind thought. Being there for others will make you feel better and you'll be there for yourself.
Avoid food that you usually binge on (pizza, burritos)
Practice mindfulness.


Take care of yourself, buddies. YOU ARE LOVED. The world is a beautiful magical place full of compassionate, interesting, artistic, passionate people. Don't let your anxiety keep you from that. Everyone has a special inner light in their soul and I appreciate yours. Namaste.

I love you. Love yourself enough to get better.