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True Confessions...

© Brenda

Those of you who know me personally know this: it’s a rarity that I don’t refer to myself as “fat”. Logically, I know I am not. But logic is not something that has governed my life. However, this is something you might not know: I have been battling two eating disorders now for 20 years, almost two-thirds of my life. Anorexia nervosa had me in its grasp for only two years. The following 18 years I spent fighting a demon called bulimia. It is only now, at 33, that I have decided to come clean. True, some of you know about the problem already, but I haven’t been honest – I’ve led you on to believe I’m no longer experiencing it, that I’m “cured”. It was only after I did the math a couple weeks ago that I contemplated writing this article. Twenty years is too much time wasted trying to waste myself away.

Eating disorders are not exclusive to “single urban women” – but it is a problem many women face. What started as a “get thin quick” scheme (or so I thought at the time) ended up costing me in many ways. My family didn’t trust me for a while as a teenager. My trips to the bathroom after meals became suspicious, so I endured the embarrassment of having someone follow me in. This only caused me to become sneakier, and so the problem persisted. The need for control over my life (I felt I had none) became so great that I switched from anorexia to bulimia in order to avoid a trip to the hospital. Weighing in at 80 pounds and standing at 5’3” didn’t necessarily qualify me for a stay in rehab, but it frightened my mother so that my every interaction with food was closely watched. I put back on some weight by bingeing in order to avoid being force-fed through an IV. It was soon afterwards that I discovered bulimia.

I have never been a “big eater” – a full meal for most people typically cramps my stomach so that I think I must purge in order to feel “okay”. So I would eat a little and I would be all right. For a while. Then I hit 29, and as it was inevitable, my body began to change. No longer could I snack on things in my sporadic way and maintain my weight. Age and probably gravity, as well as 16 years of poor eating habits, were huge odds against me. Enter bulimia.

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