Feeling Sick: Reflections on Bulimia

I was fortunate enough to come into possession of a very raw piece of writing this week, which speaks about the struggle to overcome an eating disorder.

I learned during the course of my training that people suffering from bulimia in adulthood take around 8 years to seek help. Years spent in  quiet misery, fear and confusion.

Each person’s experience is like no other’s, and each person must make their own decision about when, how, and ultimately whether they wish to change.

However, I share this piece to provide a window into an extremely powerful, pervasive force that is very often misrepresented and misunderstood.

If you are reading this and some of it rings true for you, I hope it brings you some hope of your own.

“Reflections on Bulimia”

I can’t tell you which time was the first time. The haze and jumble of dissociation has scattered my memories of disappearing down the dark hole of bulimia.

What I can tell you is that it was also the last time. Because every time I vomited was the last time, and every time I meant it. That’s what shocked me the most about bulimia – and believe me, I was frequently bewildered. The sheer force of it, the way it took on a life of it’s own. It felt like trying to stand my ground against a runaway tank hurtling down a mountain.

It’s a secret, shameful, chaotic and above all complicated disorder. When we catch glimpses of it on TV or in movies, it’s always the territory of the plump teenager teased about her weight, or the ballet dancer trying to maintain her graceful figure. I can remember girls rumoured to be bulimic in high school, who would scarf eight slices of pizza at shared lunch then disappear into the bathrooms. I thought (in typically compassionate Year 10 style) that they were just ‘dumb bimbos’, vain and thick. By the time I turned 21, I was one of those ‘dumb bimbos’ – and I could give you a hundred reasons why I became bulimic. All of them would be true, and yet all of them tell just a fragment of the story.

There were biological, social and environmental factors, as always. I suspect my mother fought her own secret battles. I learned early, as many of us do, to ‘eat my feelings’ when stressed or lonely. I took a job in a looks-focused industry. I had (OK, still do have) a predilection for perfectionism and a harsh inner critic. And last but not at all least, I experienced trauma, bereavement, and a sexual assault which turned my body into a site of shame, fear and hatred. I could go on, but my point is made. Contrary to media and pop culture portrayals, I didn’t simply wake up one day wanting to make my bum smaller and decide self-induced vomiting was a stroke of genius.

Bingeing and purging quietened and calmed everything raging inside me – without my bulimia, I am almost certain I would not be here today. With so much headspace taken up, there was no room for the other horrors. By filling myself up, I could get some sense of plugging the emptiness and isolation I felt at my core. I could comfort myself without feeding my fears of becoming ugly and unloveable. And when it was all over, I felt empty and exhausted and slept peacefully … until the next morning, when I awoke ashamed and frightened by what I had done. Then the cycle began all over again as I calmed my torment the only way I knew how – with more bingeing and purging.

I tried everything I could think of to stop. Pacts with friends, self-imposed rewards and punishments – for a while I wrote the number of days I had abstained in my work diary like a safety record tally “3 days since our last heath and safety breach, well done team!”

I joke defensively, because looking back it was anything but funny. I became the world’s best liar, and descended deeper into shame for every untruth laid out between my loved ones and I. Blood bruises peppered my eyelids and throat, concealed beneath thick makeup. Occasionally, to my terror, I vomited blood. Twice I burst veins my eyes, and once I put a tear in my oesophagus. Still I could not stop, and as my symptoms worsened I gave up hope – I can remember looking into my reflection – red eyes in a grey-skinned face I no longer recognised – and thinking: if I keep this up, I’m going to die. I’m killing myself, and I know it, and still I cannot stop.

Bulimia saved my life from trauma – but psychotherapy saved my life from bulimia. I spent two years in that hell, but the turning point in my recovery was realising that no matter how much I hated my bulimia, I couldn’t just ‘stop’ – I had to ‘give it up’. And in giving it up, I had to realise what I’d be left with when I did. I’d spent a long time fleeing my emotions, fearing they were going to swallow me whole with the same insatiability with which I swallowed food. But I’d reached rock bottom, the point at which nothing scared me more than my life remaining as it was.

So with a very kind, skilled, patient and empathetic therapist by my side every step of the way, I faced the raging runaway tank of my feelings. I got knocked over a lot. I took steps forward, and steps backwards. In many ways it felt like learning to walk again. It was long, exhausting, frustrating work – but today I can run.

Better yet, every now and then I order a cheese board for dinner without incident. If that’s not the magic of therapy, I don’t know what is.

Life is wonderful – in all its joy and sadness and wonder and connection and pain and adventure – than I ever dreamed possible that day my own reflection scared me.

And that is the gift you can help others like me claim for themselves – if you can only listen and bear our suffering long enough to guide us to our strength.

– Anonymous, shared with permission.