I am having to write this bit quickly. Before I lose my nerve. Before I get too caught up in worrying about what people will think. In the implications of self exposure.
This is the problem with talking about bulimia. This is why it’s such a big secret. This is why it puts a big brick wall up between you and the rest of the world.
Making yourself sick is repulsive – to most people. It is messy. Wasteful. It infers greed or a lack of control. It is dishonest – and it makes people dishonest.
When you’re caught up in the whole process, you kind of know all of this.
Even if you don’t want to think about it.
And you go along with it all anyway because it feels like you’re caught up in something unstoppable. Something that is taking you to places that you didn’t want to go to. Something that happens, even when you don’t mean it to happen.
And therein lies the emotional price of bulimia: you do things that you don’t want to do.
It’s like selling yourself to the devil.
In exchange for three bags of food, 2 hours of oblivion, and the knowledge that I’ll still be skeletal at the end of it, I’ll give you my pride.
In exchange for the removal of my fear, for the momentary release and the temporary relief, I’ll give you me.
And when you’ve made me walk through the streets at 3 in the morning in search of food, I know that my safety is irrelevant.
And when you’ve made me lie to my friends and deny deny deny to my family and tell story after story after story until I’m not sure what’s true any more, my honesty’s yours.
And when you’ve proven, time and time again, that whatever my intentions, whatever I try, however determined I am – you’ll still get me leaning over that toilet, you can take the final traces of self belief…
It’s a high price to pay: bulimia strikes a hard bargain.
Tags: Bulimia
