Despite adamantly believing that I would never speak about my eating disorder and vowing that, if I recovered, I would leave it behind me, I have found myself doing rather a lot of talking in recent months.
Provided with some great opportunities by Professor Janet Treasure, I have spoken to students, professionals, and general bods; and, found it a remarkably rewarding process and a real way of being able to change a few perceptions.
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Now that the worst is over, it feels, sometimes, like I’m left to pick up the pieces of a life or clearing up after a party that has gone horribly wrong.
In the moments of quiet, when I’m trudging up the stairs to my lonely flat or clutching my stomach in the middle of the night whilst it spasms, backwards and forwards, then I wish that I could reclaim a little of what I have lost –
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I have been asked to talk about the things that kept my eating disorder going for so long. The ‘maintaining factors’, in medical speak.
It is difficult to answer this now, when the reality of so many lost years feels like an open wound, and, if I could go back and violently shake my previous selves, I would.
It is hard not to turn to myself and say, yes, Melissa, what exactly did you think you were gaining from choosing an eating disorder over the things that most people aspire to, like jobs and husbands and families and friends…
Maintaining factor 1: Oblivion
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If they ever develop a way to clone humans, I’ll be recommending my brother. I’m not sure I would have got through my first binge-free night without him, and I’m certain I wouldn’t have made it through my first binge-free month.
Whilst he probably doesn’t want to repeat the experience and I don’t think he’s available on loan, I’ve been trying to identify what really made the difference – because, whether he admits it or not, he helped me turn my life around.
So, in the absence of cloning and a sibling loan provision, I’ve tried to break-down my brother and pinpoint the things that helped; because, there might be some other guardian angels flying around out there, or you might have wings yourself….
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I have been feeling a little sick over the past few days.
This is not a good thing.
The last time I was sick was the big d-day; the final swansong before I waved goodbye to a friend that I knew was killing me.
I realised, of course, that there’d be times when I might be ill, or instances when I’d find myself bending over the toilet again, whether I liked it or not; but, I didn’t anticipate the sudden stirring of memories that the once familiar taste of bile would evoke.
Like a horror film, with the flash-lighted-frozen-framed images getting closer and closer, the throbbing in my neck and the somersaulting of my stomach have triggered a slideshow in my head –
And it starts like this.
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Yesterday, I brought a box of chocolate chip cookies.
This is a significant occasion: it has taken over 14 months to trust myself with food again.
After so many planned – and unplanned – food related disasters, I have been slightly wary of anything resembling temptation.
Bulimia’s as corrosive on an emotional level as it is on a physical one: bingeing steals your self control – and then it undermines your self.
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My bulimia loved a bargain.
When most of the money that passed through my hands seemed to end up being flushed down the toilet pan; BOGOFs and ‘special offers’ and 50% extras felt like a godsend. A little cut priced bingeing stretched the pennies further and completely overrode any quantity control: why stop at one when the second’s free – and the third and fourth can be saved for tomorrow.
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This is what I remember when a cut price box of Chocolate goodies feels too good a bargain to miss; or the buy one get seven free offers would save me money in the wrong run, because I’m just going to end up succumbing to the temptation –
Stop.
What I am really paying for is a particularly violent binge, after which (and if I’m still standing) I will feel like death – for the sake of a bargain.
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Sometimes, it would get me in the middle of the night.
They don’t warn you about that.
Sometimes, the addiction would penetrate through my sleep; and, I’d find myself, bleary eyed and sleep headed, standing in the kitchen trying to assemble a pile of food.
While outside was still and sleeping and time seemed suspended, I’d be retching my guts up in my own private world.
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On Thursday, it will be 11 months since I last threw up.
In one month and 5 days, it will be a whole year since I last threw up.
At first, I counted the hours. Then hours became days and weeks and then months. After trying and failing for so long, these things are important.
Secrecy is key to bulimia. It’s what the condition demands. It’s what it depends on. And it’s not difficult to go along with when you consider the amount of shame that the whole process involves.
I’m about to break the rules.
Given the depths that bulimia has taken me to and the price that I have paid, I feel that a little frankness is in order.
Even if it’s not pretty.
Even if it’s incredibly scary.
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Reading about the effects of bulimia always seemed to result in me throwing up even more.
It seemed like the only way of managing my fear. The only way of proving that what I was reading or hearing was not true. A kind of tempting fate just to see what will happen because at the pit of your stomach you suspect it’s bad scenario.
This isn’t going to stop me from saying what happens. It just comes with a little advice. Don’t let it scare you; that’s part of the problem.
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.
My one-cigarette-less-a-day cut down method was a great act of self delusion.
Hey, it was fine to smoke right down to the burning lip line and inhale as deeply as physically possible – because those cigarettes were ‘allocated’. They were okay. And it was fine to fantasise about smoking, it was completely understandable to count down the minutes to the next cigarette – because you had your quota to go with.
The outcome’s no surprise. 10 mysteriously grows to 11. Which, following an unexpected crisis, becomes 12. Then 13 –a one off. And then the floodgates are opened.
Before I really realised what was happening, I was back to where I started, and the only lesson I’d learnt was that giving up smoking was all about deprivation and preoccupation and frustrated desire.
And that I was hooked on something that would probably kill me.
It’s just the same with bulimia.
The self delusion was identical.
Giving up any addiction is a challenge.
Giving up bulimia feels doubly difficult because you can’t just take food out of the equation.
I don’t think there is one hard, fast and proven-to-be-effective way out of bulimia. It is a strange and precarious mix of circumstance and determination and planning and support and being prepared to go through the uncertainty and the unknown.
It’s hard to get it right first time round.
Anorexia is not very honest. It tells you things that aren’t true – you eat too much – and makes you tell other people things that aren’t true – I eat enough. Bulimia’s similar although the lies are slightly different. I imagine that other eating disorders operate along the same lines of deception.
It’s not a conscious deceit – it’s all about the illness taking control. If something tells you that black is white enough times, you start to believe it. At the very least, you start to question whether black is white.
Honesty’s hard when your minds being addled. When you’re lying to yourself, lying to others is path of the course. And it makes everything a whole lot easier.
Talking about an eating disorder is humiliating. You do things that you wouldn’t normally do.
I’ve been trying to get my head around this whole pro-anorexia trend. Wondering whether, in the process of healing, I’ve forgotten what it felt like and lost a little of the empathy that would make understanding possible.
It’s hard to go back there.
When you start to see the damage and have struggled – and struggled – for your freedom, then remembering the attraction is difficult…
But it’s probably important.
If you can understand the appeal then you might be able to offer an alternative.
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I don’t get on with Victoria Station. It’s not the floundering tourists or the one-track-minded commuters that I can’t take. Nor the noise and the dirt and the tedium of waiting for delayed or crammed trains. I can even put up with the constantly interrupted conversation.
It is, instead, the smell of food and the onslaught of food vendors that I can’t take. Even after 9 years of distance.
Stations were a playground for my bulimia.
