The first time I forced myself to throw up, I was 14 years old.
My road trip through hell, what others would call an eating disorder, began in the springtime of my sophomore year of high school. It became a daily challenge for me to look at myself in the mirror, and I was in complete denial that I had a problem.
It started with what I thought was a seemingly harmless vice. Similar to the 20 to 25 percent of “normal dieters” who progress to full-fledged eating disorder patients, I started to attempt to eat healthfully and diet like my nutritionist suggested. But then Friday would come, I’d be out with friends and stumble upon a juicy hamburger or some ice cream. I would create all these elegant excuses, in an effort to validate to myself, that eating the food and throwing up was OK.
By the time I reached the summer of my junior year, things had escalated to an extreme that I swore I would never reach. I began to take every comment anyone said personally. I’d be out for dinner with family and would reach for a piece of bread. When someone would make a remark about how I shouldn’t be eating so many carbs, I would immediately feel shame, like a fat, schlubby piece of garbage. Was I being too hard on myself? Probably, but that’s how I felt. My brain would tell me that I was nauseous until I actually puked. This would happen multiple times a week. I cared more about how thin I felt than I did my physical health.
The public’s view on disorders like bulimia and anorexia is decidedly negative when generally so little is actually known. Therefore, the general reaction is usually irrational. But, to those who are struggling, nothing in the world makes more sense. We justify everything to ourselves, creating an immovable barrier between us and those who in our perception just don’t understand.
It’s never been difficult for me to open up to close friends and family about my problems, but this proved to be something very different. It was what the childhood me would probably have dubbed my deepest, darkest secret. Part of me refused to come clean because I thought, subconsciously, that if I told the truth, everything would, all of a sudden, become real.
My family is one of the closest I’ve ever seen. Ever since I was a young girl, my parents always made sure that I knew I could talk to them about anything. Drinking, relationships, drugs — no subjects were off-limits. But, this was a topic that I was never able to bring up. There were certainly times I considered talking to my mom, but then, when is the right time to tell your mother that her daughter is having problems? In the car on the way to the mall? Over dinner at a crowded restaurant? No time ever felt like the right time.
It was so ingrained in my mind that anyone I told would view me as defective, a glitch in the gene pool or some such nonsense, so I withheld the truth.
So I tried to confront bulimia alone, and I was also struggling with bouts of depression. It became a self-destructive cycle in which I would feel depressed, eat my feelings, instinctively get rid of that food, and then become more depressed as a result. A vicious cycle to be sure. Evidently, this isn’t rare, and almost 50 percent of people with eating disorders meet the criteria for depression.
It is no secret that those with eating disorders are looked at by the majority of society as a series of stereotypes and statistics.
It was difficult for me as a woman to handle the possible societal backlash that comes along with having bulimia. For men, it becomes even more complicated. Men are much less likely to seek treatment for eating disorders because of the perception that they are “woman’s diseases." The reality is, approximately 10 to 15 percent of eating disorder patients are male.
As a culture, we need to stop making eating disorders a taboo subject that is reserved for starving models and socialites in the tabloids. The hard fact is that eating disorders are very real and all too common. They reside in high schools’ halls. They’re the cry that no one hears from bedrooms late at night.
More than anything else, they are addictions. Teachers never discuss that part in health class when covering eating disorders. Trying to rid yourself of an eating disorder is similar, I’d imagine, to what a nicotine addict feels when trying to quit smoking. You can go a week, a month, a year free of temptation, but in an instant, enticement can return. And like that, you’re back on the always spinning wheel of self-destruction.
There has to be a change in the mindset the general public has about eating disorders and the way they are stigmatized. Despite popular observation, often propagated by the media, most people with eating disorders aren’t attention-seeking, idiotic young girls that wish to conform to the image of the size double-zero model on the cover of Vogue. We are not the series of adjectives that tend to loom over conversations about eating disorders. We are not feeble, weak or vain. We’re just people, both female and male, who are uncomfortable with the image of the person staring back at us in our bathroom mirrors.
I was hesitant about writing and publishing this article. In reading this piece, a majority of my family and friends will find out about this huge part of my life for the first time. A piece of me would love to continue living in secrecy, but I realize that, in doing that, I would be contradicting everything that needs to be done not only for myself, but for the countless others suffering in silence. Previously, I have been too scared to speak up, seek help and be open about my eating disorder. I too have let society put me in a box. However, I’m not letting that happen anymore.
The conversation has to not only start, but it has to continue in the light of day. In this case, things are not better left unsaid. We have to stop cautiously sneaking around the elephant in the room and dive right into communicating. Perhaps then we will stop shutting down those too afraid to speak out and allow the much needed healing to begin.
