I Have Bulimia

My Survivor Story

by smc924

Experience Project~ Do you know what the first thing I remember about my 28th birthday is?  I s*** my pants.  Way to welcome in the 28th year.  I was walking to work and just couldn’t get there fast enough.  This was the second of three times this would happen to me over the course of the year.  Though I suppose having taken sixty five stool softeners and  ten laxatives the night before played a role in it, but I had to, right?  Everyone wants to look thin on their birthday and Jon was taking me to dinner,  plus I had a piece of chocolate cake the night before.


I look back on that day and see how far I have come.  Granted I’ve put on 35lbs possibly more, I wouldn’t know I’ve given my scale away, but it will come off healthily and permanently.  I can’t say the desire to be thin has gone away, but I can say my “Life without Ed”  is truly fab.

I’ve been heavier since I was a little girl.  Maybe eight years old.  I remember at five walking around singing about myself in full confidence “I’m the prettiest girl on campus,” somewhere along the way that confidence turned to shame. I think the comments from my family started to come when I was around nine.  In all honesty, I maybe just had a little baby fat, but  by 10 I was already doing Richard Simmons Deal a Meal which evolved into a strictly liquid diet during the daytime for me, only having dinner with parents over the course of four months.  By twelve I had decided to become a vegetarian faking a strong anticruelty bravado to cover up an insecure little girl trying to do whatever she could to lose weight..

 I remember comments from Grandma, My Grandpa, and my aunts about my weight. I felt like I was a disappointment and embarrassment to my parents and that maybe they would love me as much as my brother and sister if I could lose some weight and people would stop commenting to them about it. In retrospect I think perhaps these  were some of the first voices of eating disorder or ED that I heard.

The years that followed contained periods of starvation and binging to make up for emotions associated with moving far from my friends and being an awkward little girl with a deep Pennsylvania accent thrust to the eighth grade of a school with kids who acted very cruel.  In high school, I did make a good friend, her name was Tabatha. Tabatha however was possibly the most self conscious person  I have ever met.  She is  tall and very thin but refused to wear sleeveless shirts because she thought her arms were fat.  She gave looks for outfits she didn’t like, and while being a true friend, fed into my insecurities. 

At fifteen I purged for the first time.  I had eaten a box of candy after a particularly rough day at school.  I remember sticking my fingers down my throat, the pain in the upheaval, and the relief once my body was rid of the poison I had just fed it.  I began purging daily.  I received so many compliments as my body shrunk in front everyone.  My friends and I would go to Friendlies for Sundaes a couple times a week.  I would get a house salad, with honey mustard dressing while they would have Peanutbutter cup sundaes.  I would always purge my salad.     Things cooled down in the summer and I returned to normal eating habits, and gained back most of what I lost. 

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