Every once in a while I experience some kind of physical issue that more than likely can be traced back to all the starving and self induced vomiting I engaged in during my adolescent years. I suppose enduring, permanent damage to my gastrointestinal tract was not high on my list of concerns when I was a teenager. I didn’t want to eat, and if I did eat I needed to eject the food from myself as quickly as possible. After a few years of this I developed the dreaded bulimia jaw. In fact, so prominent was the swollen jaw that whenever I started purging again my mother would immediately notice the change in my face and confront me. It wasn’t my secret anymore. I was crushed when I realized I could not participate in this behavior anymore without wearing it on my face. How shameful!
These little anecdotes and memories of my past life in anorexia/bulimia land rarely get shared with anyone. I’m mindful of course of the dangers of sharing “war stories” and any physical consequences of the eating disorder, not wanting to trigger others or invite competition. I have no interest in that, as I have removed myself from that world and have found meaning elsewhere. However, it seems strange not to be able to share any details about such a significant part of my life. The people who would understand the most would be the most triggered. The people who don’t understand may likely be repulsed if they knew I had, at one time in my life, forced myself to throw up multiple times a day. Purging is far less glamorous than starvation and while I did both, vomiting was my favorite.
Why do people even purge? I know why I did and can only speak to that. It was for the numbness, the dulling of the sharp emotional pain I experienced in my day to day life. I was purging food, yes, but I really wanted to purge myself of trauma and self loathing and the fear of being found out. I didn’t have my voice yet and I silenced myself. I felt gross, so I did the grossest thing: I made myself throw up every day. I inflicted this violence on myself, and I loved it. I deserved it. It was my drug. It was my secret until it wasn’t. No one could make me eat, no one could make me love myself, no one could make me speak. They fed me what they thought was best, to be sure. I swallowed it in compliance and waited until they turned their backs to vomit it back up. This was my teenage defiance. No one could make me do anything I didn’t want to do.
Until they did. They made me stop. I hated them for that. They exposed my secret and left me with nothing. What was left? I could not ignore my pain anymore. I was forced to confront it. But they didn’t know how to help me. So I swallowed it again and waited and waited and waited for them to turn their backs. Eventually they trusted me again, but they didn’t know I had been waiting. Over and over they caught me, locked me up, and took it away from me. I stopped, they relented, and I took it back. Back and forth for years we went until I had had enough.
Why did I do it? Why did I waste so much time? I wondered what it would be like to eat and not want to throw up. I wondered what it would be like to eat and not feel crippling guilt and disgust. What would it be like to live? A glimmer of hope appeared now and then. But I clung to my secret still. It morphed over the years and still spoke to me, promising but never delivering. I simultaneously grew more miserable and more hopeful. Until it happened one day, years later. Sadness had come upon me again and I ate. And after I ate, I went to the bathroom. And when I was in the bathroom, I sat down. And sitting down, I stood outside myself and watched as I had done years before. Except this time I didn’t vomit. I got up and walked out of the bathroom and went back to work. I didnt have time for it anymore and I was done. There was no big, shocking revelation. Only one small decision built upon years of treatment, ambivalence, recovery, and relapse.
I make it sound so simple here but it wasn’t. I can remember crying on the floor in front of my peers and treatment providers. Screaming at my mother. Throwing the most vile words I could think of at whoever threatened to take it away. To be left to my own devices was most desirable to me at one time, and I’m glad that I didn’t get what I wanted. I suppose there’s something to be said for forced treatment. I wonder if I would be alive if nobody forced me to go. But I know that I am alive now. I have a voice that I get to use now. I am okay and I am healed, save for a few enduring physical ailments. But I am okay.
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