On Bulimia.

The urge to purge has been strong and violent.

I don't purge anymore. I have on very rare occasion during fits of insane stress, but I avoid it at all costs. It's one behavior that I have tried to beat out of myself. I think about my delicate teeth and weak stomach, which bear witness to the self-destructive years of childhood robo-barfing. I think about the act of intentionally putting my face where other people crap, and how inherently disgusting that is.

I know it's horrid.

The thought, however, remains. What goes in can come back out. What makes you fat can be eradicated. What frightens you can be removed.

It's tempting at times.

Logically, it's much easier not to eat. Anorexics, to me, are much more logical creatures. They thrive on rational, logical, cold facts. They count calories. They know how much fat is in an ounce of cottage cheese. They perform mathematic calculations at the speed of light. Bulimics are people of passion and emotion. Food comforts. It's like a drug. It causes a brief moment of bliss followed by intense guilt and pain. Purging is cathartic. It feels like healing at the time.

I have always varied between the two, but I pretty much threw bulimia by the wayside in high school. I had a friend at the modeling agency who died from a gastric rupture. She left a pool of blood and vomit on the bathroom floor, and simply disappeared.  She was fifteen.

A row of models sat in the back row during the funeral service, nervously picking at our sleeves. We would never purge again, we said. Never.

I didn't for a long time.  I hope that I won't again.
The process of digestion and elimination, so normal and barely noticeable to most, becomes frightening and painful for the eating disordered.  

I genuinely like to eat, but I hate feeling full.

Last night, D. brought home cheesecake and cannoli. It was damn good. I ate it with relish and licked my fork. Ten minutes later, I could feel it sitting in my stomach like a burning brick. The voices began.

You know, that was really dense. What were you thinking? Why did you do it? You will step on the scale tomorrow and cry. Your jeans will be tight. Your face will look bloated and round. Get rid of it. Get rid of it. Erase it. You can, you know. You don't have to pay the price. There's always a way. Make it disappear.

I didn't, but I wanted to. And after a while, it made me want to drink. It made me want to take Vicodin and tune my angry body out.

So, I did.

Not smart at all.

In therapy, I was constantly told to talk about my feelings. How did I feel when I ate? How did I feel when I starved? What memories did certain foods bring to mind? It wasn't what I would call fun. It made me want to go home and eat the contents of the fridge. My way of coping is to stop thinking about it entirely. The less I think about food, the more likely I am to remain in control.

Food is a big deal among people with eating disorders. What do you like? What won't you touch? What do you crave? What do like to watch others eat? Do you have any good low-cal recipes? It's funny. We probably discuss food more than the obese.

I dream about food a lot. Swedish fish. Chocolate pie. Pizza. Big Macs. Pasta.

In the past week, I have eaten all of those dream foods; and that scares me more than I can say.

I imagine myself in the Shallow Hal fat suit. I imagine myself nine months pregnant, two hundred and fifty pounds, digging into a carton of Ben and Jerry's with tears streaming down my face. It paralyzes me.

I wish I knew how to look at a sandwich and just see a sandwich, not Evil Death Sandwich from Calorie Hell.

I wish I could find that happy medium.

I don't think they're shallow, these obsessions with weight and size and food. I think they're deeper than I can even comprehend.  When they're gone for a while, the space that they held becomes needy and angry and greedy.

Greed terrifies me.

My own propensity for self-destruction terrifes me more. I wonder if I will wind up old and obese, or shriveled and bony and ugly.

I don't know which scares me more, and I don't know why I can't live somewhere in the middle.