My Bulimia Experience

I developed Bulimia at aged 16 after I had lost weight during a bout of Gastro, and thought I was on to something great.  It became the addiction that it is of course and turned me from an open and honest girl into a secretive, lying, introverted home body.   I had no idea what I was doing even had a name for about 6 months I think, then I was forced to come clean as I blocked up the plumbing after dinner one night............................ Then it was visits to the GP. The lock taken off the bathroom door, even a trip to a Psychologist for a few years.   I would dig holes (we lived on a farm) after escaping out of my bedroom window and throw up there so no one would no anything.  I moved our of home at aged 17 into our rental house in towns converted garage flat, and binged and purged up to 15 times per day.... Even water.  Purging a lot makes you very thirsty so I would drink a ton of water and then the big Grey Brain Monster would take over my rational thinking and say, you feel full get rid of it, even though I KNEW there was nothing in water to make me fat.   At aged 18 I went to work in Osaka Japan at a World Expo there and as food was so incredibly expensive and the boyfriend I went with dumped me for another Aussie, I went from Bulimic to Anorexic living on one mouth full of Apple Juice and 3 M&M's per day.  They made me so hyper that I spent about 2 hours after having them running up and down 10 flights of stairs.   On the flight back home to Australia I remember pulling at the skin on my for arm and it was rice paper thin, I could see through it, there wasn't a millimeter of fat there at all and I remember thinking, "wow, look at that, that's weird"and that was that.  My parents nearly had heart attacks when they picked me up at Tullamarine, I had to approach them, they didn't recognise me.  Mum said my face looked skeletal, but there's no photo's from that time, and when I looked in the mirror I still looked fat to me, so I only have her thoughts on that.   With all the roasts and everything on the farm I soon went back to bulimia and put weight on rapidly.  This concerned me but I was still in little clothes and getting a lot of male attention so it wasn't of huge concern.   I remember when I was having an emotionally bad day I would purge more than a good day, it was like I was purging my bad emotions rather than food, I felt a release and remember thinking maybe this is what people who slit their wrists feel like.... I don't know why I thought that, but I often did.    At one stage my period stopped for 9 months and my GP told me I had ruined my chances of ever having children, so I went off the pill (of which I had been taking 3 per day just to make sure I didn't throw up one that hadn't done it's job yet.  A year later I got pregnant and the weird thing about that is that I was still so in touch with my body that a male voice in my head said YOU ARE PREGNANT and that was only about 30 mins after having sex..............................I didn't tell anyone about this and when Mum and my boyfriend found out about 3 months later they convinced me to have it aborted which is what happened.  Probably for the best as I was obviously not emotionally stable.   I also took a full packet of Laxettes per day and then when I could no longer face eating them I went onto ford pills I took 3 to 4 per day of them and a lot of water, the more water you drink with them the more effective they are.   I had calluses on my knuckles where they join your hand from my front teeth constantly rubbing over them when purging, it's actually a good thing for parents to look out for as a tell tale sign.   I finally forced myself to give it up when I saw how much it was hurting my Mum who has always been my best friend.  I ate a small meal and then sat with my back to my bedroom door for 5 hours which was the time I began to digest food............ I knew my body sooo well back then.  It took maybe a month of doing this and it was the hardest thing mentally I have ever had to do, I can't express in words how hard it was to fight the big grey Monster in my head, it was all powerful and I simply was not.  I remember thinking I have to do this for my Mum, meal after meal, day after day.  I was very lucky, Mum and dad didn't tell me to go out and get a job, they wanted me to be get better first. As a result to this day at age 36 I am over weight and seem to have kept the bingeing part but given up the purging (mores the pity) and every now and then it'll get to me and I'll have a burl and realise what a stupid thing to do it is and not do it again for another 6-12 months.  I have a bladder that needs emptying more than most 9 month due pregnant women and a lazy bowel, probably both caused by my laxative abuse.  I have been told by a GP that I have broken the seal in the stomach that food filters through when your food settles and is digested so mine all just clumps in the digestive juices right up and if I do eat to much I feel incredibly sick for several hours whilst it is digested.  I have been able to conceive and have a child thank God as she is the best part of who I have ever been and am and if I had ruined my chances because I was a typically emotionally un happy teenager (I had terrific parents and a great freedom etc. So just a typical teenager), it would have been devastating.   My teeth are pretty weak and crappy having most of the enamel on then burned off by stomach acid, they crack and break easily.  I also get sinusitis now and I personally believe that was caused by the throwing up as well as it began around age 17 when I started, I have a post nasal drip which gives me sore throats a lot and as I always loved to sing I can't get through a song without having to cough and clear my throat.   I was told by caring friends when I was still in high school, that my hair would fall out and my teeth would fall out if I didn't stop, non of these things happened, but there are a life long legacy of things that do happen which are in the least annoying and at most can be sadly devastating.   I get heart palpitations quite frequently and I am too scared to go to the GP about it because maybe I have damaged my heart and I'm going to leave my daughter Motherless, I am too scared to find out which is probably stupid but there you go.  I still have a lazy bowel and irritable Bowel Syndrome now which was probably from taking too many laxatives, Up until 4 years ago I never knew when I was hungry, I felt light headed and ill if I had gone to long but I never got a growling hungry feeling in my tummy, I do now and it's like a reunion with an old friend, I LOVE it when my tummy growls at me these days, as it was about 14 years when it never did.   To begin with for me it was a quick way to lose weight.  When I worked up the nerve to ask a boy if he'd partner me for my debut he politely gave me an excuse and then when we went back to class after that lunch time, a boy at his table said in a very loud voice as I entered the room "Fat Ugly Girls shouldn't be allowed to make their debut" that was my catalyst.  I had grown up with a big Mum and big Aunts and Big Grand parents and they'd all joke saying don't eat too much of that, you don't want to end up fat like your Aunty etc.  It was all meant in jest and everyone said it, but I know one of my cousins also had Bulimia and I suspect another still does.    When you hear something over and over again even if it is said in innocence it hits deep in the psyche of adolescence it took me several years to work out that that was also a compounding reason, along with the usual pressure to be thin and beautiful, the thinner I got the more male attention I received and told how beautiful I was...... Like you're not going to keep up the good work when people are saying things like that to you.  Everything that people do innocently or to be nice or what ever can have such a profound effect on a teenager or even a tween these days.   I am scared for my own daughter, she is but 19 months old, but I know I am going to have to be incredibly vigilant of her and boost herself worth in things other than her beauty even though right now I think she's the most beautiful girl in the world, I shall have to tell her she is the smartest, or the most practical or artistic or what ever it is when I am expressing my pride and love for her when she is older even 7 years old, as these things do sink in and sit there in their heads until something happens that completes their inner jigsaw puzzle and for a time your child you knew, will be as lost to you as if they were on drugs.   It was a big grey monster that like a storm cloud crept from the back of my brain to the front, I could see it in my minds eye and it spoke to me, and it was the boss, the boss was called Bulimia. I wrote this as a  letter in response to a Q&A request, and then I thought, maybe this is something that might help parents of teens understand more and help them find some hope that with love and determination you can again reach your darling child, as my Mum reached me.