Hey world :)
Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. The last few weeks I really haven't been able to make sense of anything. Not my thoughts, not my actions, not my eating disordered behaviours, not my past, my present or my future. My head has been somewhat of a whirlwind and I have been avoiding facing the storm.
I really don't know what has caused this sudden flooding of thoughts (for something other than food, weight and calories). Maybe its because of treatment. Maybe its just a new kind of madness and anxiety. Or maybe I'm just searching for some kind of answer or justification for why I have spent the last 15 years of my life pulling myself apart and having a love affair with the toilet.
I finally picked up my pen and started to write this blog entry from my bathroom while I run a bath. Why? Because it occurred to me that I had no idea what to do while I waited for the bath to fill. I tried to think of the last time I hadn't been purging whilst running a bath. I couldn't remember.
For some reason this struck me as nothing but sad. It made no sense. So I started to write, to make sense of this and of everything else I've been thinking over the past few weeks. I've been thinking about my childhood and my teenage years a lot lately- I guess just trying to figure out how I got to this point. I have good memories; Good times with friends, kisses with boys (and a couple of girls), fun family holidays, happy school days. But the memories that stand out to me most are all tied in to my eating disorder.
When I think about school, my first thoughts aren't about my favourite teachers or subjects. They are about the toilets I used to throw up in. Which ones were safest to use because they were the least frequented by others. I remember how I'd hide in the library so I didn't have to eat dinner with my friends. I remember food tech class, where I'd cunjure up endless lists of allergies and claim them as my own even though I didn't possess them, just to get out of eating whatever culinary efforts we'd cooked up. I remember how I panicked about seeing the school nurse and having to be weighed, so much that I actually hyperventilated and had to go home sick. I remember (painfully) the science class in which we had to be weighed in front of the teacher who then wrote out everyone's weight on the blackboard for some expreiment (the name of the teacher and the point of the experiment I don't recall). Just the numbers. She wrote the evil numbers in order. Fattest first. I remember I was the third heaviest girl in my class. I remember how the embarrassment was painted on my cheeks in slut red and how I choked back tears, unable to speak. I remember how when I got home that day I calved out those tears and watched the same slut red colour cry out of my arms instead of my cheeks. A punishment. A constant reminder of my failures.
When I think of my friends, who I loved dearly; I don't think of girly sleepovers and make over sessions with magazines and popcorn, though they happened and I know I would have had fun. I think of their bathrooms and how many times I puked up my pain in them. I could only think of one of my friends houses that I didn't vomit in. That's good I thought, some normality. Then I remembered I only ever stood in the hallway for brief moments before walking to school together.
When I think of boys, I don't think of first kisses and holding hands and valentines cards. I think of the worry I felt at the thought of them having to touch someone as repulsive as me. I remember lying at night fantasising of a surgeon creating me into a materpiece, a perfect presence- I imagined how he would cut off all the bits of me that were too much and just leave me with a brain and stick arms and stick legs.
And when I was fifteen and absolutely in love- the thing I remember most are the arguments we had on opposite sides of the bathroom door as he begged me to stop throwing up the pathetic amount of food I had for dinner. I remember begging him one day to come for a walk with me after dinner so that I could throw up in the bushes along the canal near my house because my Dad was in his bedroom next to the bathroom and he would definitely hear me puke through the thin walls. I remember telling him to walk ahead while I puked. But he said no. He said if I had to do it that bad I'd have to do it infront of him. So I did. It was all that mattered in that moment. I remember him breaking up with me. I remember the pain. I remember promising myself I'd fix it by getting thin then he'd want me again. I remember numbers. Notebooks full of numbers. Weights. Calories. Fat content.
I try to remember who I was before bulimia. I truly have no idea. My earliest memories are of just wanting to be someone else. Anything but me. Looking back now, I think bulimia had me a long time before I actually started starving and making myself sick. While I was busy playing with dolls and living in the world of Disney dreaming up my magical future, bulimia was busy manipulating my thoughts, making the rules, carving out the mold I could never fit into and tying on the strings it now uses to control me.
I do remember that I was a lively child. I wanted to be someone. Do something amazing. Achieve everything. I had so many passions, so much energy. I wanted to teach, to dance, to mend, to sing, to heal, to make music, to touch, to draw, to love, to create, to act, to write, to listen, to be heard, to be wonderful and to do it all. To just be. To just be anything but me. There was so much I wanted to do that I could never focus on one thing.
If I hadn't been so absolutely convinced of my total incompetance, my total incapability, my talentlessness, my ugliness, and of my very presence just being too much- something that needed reigning in and controlling; If I hadn't been so afraid of failure and rejection and just getting in people's way- I might have had grabbed onto one or more of those things and actually been someone. Instead I hid in a world that seemed safe. A world I could actually focus on and give all my time and attention to. A world that was private and safe where I wouldnt be in anyones way. A world that meant I couldn't disappoint anyone because they would never know I was there. My secret. My world. My life. It became me. Bulimia was my career, my life, my passion, my art, my friend. Its all I know. Its as much a part of me as my heart.
And its killing me.
I was overwhelmed by all the things I wanted to be; All the passions, needs and desires that seeped from my vains. I was so scared of trying and failing that I let bulimia fool me into biting into its apple. It promised me a security, a guarenteed future, the keys to the Kingdom. It promised me thinness, success, control, happiness. It promised if I followed its rules I'd be someone. I never got anything it promised. It am not someone. I am just bulimic.
Living with an eating disorder is incredibly boring. It takes all your time, all your thoughts. I've recognised that fact and known it well for a long time. But I think that what I've realised and made sense of in this blog is that bulimia steals and taints the most precious thing of all. Your memories. I've never realised that before. It hurts to remember my life through my bulimic eyes- unable to recall properly or appreciate the good times because those memories are overshadowed by the darkness of an eating disordered mind. This realisation feels like grief. It's just too sad. Too much of a waste. Too much that I've lost that I cant ever take back.
I don't want another ten years to pass where my strongest memories are still of all the public toilets I've puked in. All the times I've parked my car in desserted streets or car parks and thrown up into carrier bags. All the times I've silently been sick into the bin in my room at work. I don't want to only remember depression and loneliness and fear and vomit and pain.
I want my strongest memories to be of carefree nights out with my wonderful friends. Of finding myself and being the me I was meant to be before bulimia stole her. I want to remember publishing a book. Flying a kite with my children. Learning piano and guitar. Singing. I want to take photos of flowers and sunsets and beauty in the world that I haven't seen clearly since I was a kid. I want to remember laughter and smiles. I want to feel happiness.
I realised I could have been someone and its not too late to find out who and still become her. I realised its not too late to turn things around and make those new memories I long to treasure.
I think I finally found a reason for the fight. My reason to recover. And that's the next step.
