I used to be bulimic
I’ve never told anyone before
Or maybe everyone already knows
And maybe I still am bulimic
I do have the two little scars on my fingers that look as if they will be there forever
I am marked for life
The first time I threw up I was eleven.
There is a three year gap between the first and second time. So I technically wasn’t bulimic back then. Yet the first time is always the most important.
I was at a dance recital. I had only joined the studio a few months back and unlike everyone else it seemed. I didn’t have a buddy to chat with. So with seemingly nothing to do, I resorted to eating large quantities of the potato chips out of boredom. The potato chips started to make me feel disgusting and greasy I felt in no condition to dance at all. And I started to ...panic I guess. For lack of a better word.
Then it hit me to try vomiting it all back up.
When I got to the porcelain, I tried to do it without using my fingers, but that didn’t work.
The first time you scrape your fingernails on your pharynx (yes, you actually have to reach that far) it is really scary. You just cannot believe that you are doing this. You cannot believe that you just DID that!
It’s terrifying. You’re all alone in the bathroom stall and you’re terrified that someone was watching.
After I had a moment to calm down, it was a bit empowering actually.
I, and no one else, was brave enough to do that.
The second time I threw up happened when I was fourteen. And that was when I started doing it chronically enough for me to consider myself a bulimic. (No one else. Just me. High school years are the ones in which you search for an identity.)
I was really miserable in my 14th year, and maybe a bit before that.
I had no friends and no one cared to be with me. I was exaggerating things because was going through depression (retrospectively self-diagnosed) but I really did feel like there was nothing left for me; that I was being left behind.
Not only that...I was starting to confront my queerness...and had been looking up porn on the computer.
I started purging because I had a choice between vomiting and cutting...and I was terrified of blood.
Although the initiation of my period since then had changed my attitude.
Vomiting at the time was the proof, the assurance that there was something wrong with me and it wasn’t just in my head.
Vomiting was just something to do that made it all make sense. It made what was happening to me rational.
Looking back I realize that was thinking as if I was following a script. And consciously.
“Oh! My life is shambling! I should throw up! That would be such an intriguing plot twist.
Like they say: “The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense."
I still throw up, but I don’t do it chronically enough to consider myself bulimic.
Something they never tell you, is that bulimia turns you into an expert on the digestive system
Like the enzymes and how everything digests. The amount of time you wait after eating before throwing up makes a huge difference. If the food is still in your esophagus, throwing up is a lot easier because the food hasn't digested chemically very much( salivary amylase starts to work on the starch, but the food isn't in your mouth for very long o it doesn't have much of a chance o work) ..it's just wet and chewed up. Although it is harder to flush because it's still pretty solid.
If you wait until the food is in your stomach...then it's acidic and can burn your throat as the food comes up. It's hurt a lot. But because it's been in your body longer the pepsin has had a could whack and digesting to proteins in food and it's easier to flush down.
(On this note...I didn’t binge really. Although throwing up did make me hungry, so I did eat a lot more than normal. But I didn’t think I can consider it binging because I wasn’t eating for the sake of throwing up)
•Bulimia
•Purging Bulimia
•I used to be racist
•We used to be punk
•I met her today, the girl I used to be