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.
