My attempts to stop my binge purge episodes through willpower failed within minutes. It never occurred to me to confide in someone or ask for help.
I binged on fruit in an attempt to control my massive eating. I'd take six or more oranges downstairs to the recreation room, turn on the TV, and settle in. First I would peel an orange with a sharp knife. Then, to postpone eating for as long as possible, I would cut the peels into many tiny pieces. I'd cut the white from the orange skin. I tried to get satisfaction from the cutting, but I always moved on to the binge. Looking back, it's curious to me that I never cut myself, as many children and adults suffering from anorexia and bulimia do. That wasn't part of my pattern.
I started college at Northwestern University, where I majored in journalism. At my sorority house, Zeta Tau Alpha, only one bathroom offered privacy. I planned my eating and vomiting so I could use that bathroom when the adjoining room was empty. I binged and threw up before dates in my attempt to appear as a normal eater in public.
I remember long and awkward times in public bathrooms. I risked discovery. If someone came in, they might see my feet turned the wrong way in the stall. In a small public bathroom I risked someone in the adjoining stall hearing me. I couldn't come out until they left. I wonder how much time I spent in bathroom stalls, waiting for people to leave?
My bingeing and purging remained a secret throughout my college years. My attempts to stop were secret, too. I had a sorority sister whose father was a doctor. He gave her a prescription for diet pills, and she often got more than enough to share with her friends. I used amphetamines for two years.
The diet pills did not stop my bingeing and purging. They stunted my hunger pangs, but I never binged or purged because I was hungry. The amphetamines helped me be more methodical in my planning. But the planning itself got out of hand.
The first pill I ever took knocked me out for an hour. When I woke, I felt my blood vibrating in my veins and a new kind of energy that helped me feel unreal and intent on whatever project I had in mind. I gathered my books, my notes, my pads and pens, and began mapping out a complex way to do my work. I became so intent on creating a system that by the time I was ready to actually study, I was too exhausted and confused to get far. I used the pills to stay up all night for several nights in a row studying for finals. No one seemed to think this was abnormal since many of the girls pulled “all-nighters.” I wonder how many of us shared similar secrets.
When I realized I was dependent on amphetamines, I stopped taking them and went through withdrawal without knowing the existence of the word, all in secret.
I married when I was twenty. I was living with my parents, and in my mind I was planning an event that was like a play with me in the lead role. I binged and purged three or four times a day and went through the ceremony in a trance. Nothing seemed real—not the groom, not my parents, not me.
My new husband was in the Air Force. We had little money, yet I had to binge and purge. I bought two inexpensive packaged cake mixes at a time, usually lemon cake because I liked it the least and hoped that would slow me down. One night, I baked a cake and served it for dessert. We both had a serving. My husband had another later in the evening.
The next day, after I had devoured the rest of the first cake in secret, I baked the second cake, frosted it, and cut out and ate the equivalent of the three pieces we had eaten the night before so the cake looked the same to my husband. It was the cheapest way to maintain my bulimia. I tried doing this with homemade bread too, but it was too difficult to throw up.
By my early thirties, I was a wife with a teenage daughter, and my life was still unreal. One day, it dawned on me that when my daughter turned eighteen, I'd be forty. These numbers were culturally defined for me. Eighteen meant independence as a girl moved into womanhood. Forty (for women at the time) meant being cast aside as irrelevant. The vision of my life alone with my husband was bleak. I wanted my daughter to become independent, but the thought of my life going on as it was without her to give it meaning was intolerable. I knew I had to prepare myself for the day when she would be on her own, but I didn't know how.
I read classic literature. I volunteered in the community. I binged and purged daily, sometimes up to twelve times a day. My binge/purge episodes kept me busy but provided no relief. I often fell asleep on the couch in front of the TV to stop feeling. When I awoke my despair greeted me. Sometimes I would binge and purge for days, unable to leave the house.
I spent hours on the beach with my German shepherds, Rain and Charlie, because I didn't binge on the beach. I walked and often wrote, but I could not sustain any activity for long. When I realized I could live this way forever, I knew I had to aim for something more. My marriage was lonely, my child was growing up, and I felt I was heading for forty and a drop into oblivion.
I was thirty-two. I decided I would do something to make the day of my fortieth birthday not be just good, but great. My goal was to wake up that morning happy about my life and looking forward to the day. I had no idea how to make that happen. It never occurred to me that I could stop bingeing and throwing up. As I think back, I believe that day was the first time I had a sense of my own future. I could never imagine living more than six months ahead. I believed I would choke to death during a purge. That day it occurred to me that I could take responsibility for my life.
One day, while checking my reflection in the bathroom mirror for any tell-tale spatter from my purge, I thought “What if I used all the energy I put into my eating disorder for something else? What might I accomplish in life?” It occurred to me, for the first time, that maybe I had a choice about bingeing and purging.
From where I was I reached out to the thing that had been consistently reliable in my life—reading. It had always been my solace, my haven, my escape, and my source of guidance. I enrolled in UCLA, majoring in psychology. I binged and threw up every afternoon. I remember driving home from campus, gripping the steering wheel and saying out loud, “I won't do it.” But I always stopped at the market and picked up my chips, ice cream, and Oreo cookies. At home, I ate it all and threw it up.
During my studies at UCLA, I was forced to create boundaries because I needed time and space to learn. I tacked a yellow 8 ½ x 11-inch sheet of paper above my desk listing all the courses I needed to take in order to graduate with a degree in psychology. It represented two and a half years of work. I looked at that list every day and knew that somehow I had to check off every class if I were going to get to my new life.
Fear or courage, determination or feelings on the edge of despair, drove me on. I had many gaps in my education. I used grammar school, junior high, and high school math textbooks to get me through calculus. A required computer programming course completely baffled me, but a friend helped me through with nightly phone calls and many homework emergency responses.
My life felt grim even as I met the requirements for my schooling, did internships, and studied for licensing exams, while simultaneously experiencing financial loss, raising a teenage daughter, and carrying on a glamorous romance where I lived and breathed the fantasy life of a princess. By the time I was thirty-six and in graduate school, I knew my marriage was over. I binged and purged, drank, and had affairs all throughout the divorce proceedings. This is bulimia in action. I was bingeing, not only on food, but on frantic activity and romance as well.
Between college and graduate school, my husband, daughter, and I went on a family vacation to Cornwall, England. On the trip that was meant to be a bonding experience, I realized I could not pretend there was any life left in my marriage. My husband left England for Los Angeles as we had originally planned. I stayed with my daughter for another week. That's when I met John.
I was still actively bulimic when John made his elegant advances. He fulfilled a bulimic dream I often see in many of my patients as they struggle to open themselves to the first stage of eating disorder recovery. Bulimic fantasies are not compatible with a life in recovery.
John and I had a long distance relationship. I didn't realize he was an alcoholic, even though I noticed his destructive patterns. He didn't know I was bulimic. We saw each other when we were both at our best, and we believed