Bulimia Was Only a Symptom
After dropping to 95 pounds on my self-imposed daily food allotment of carrots and a can of shrimp with ketchup, I slowly started eating, again. I was 16. But it wasn’t long after giving myself permission to eat that the dam broke. Eating turned into bingeing, which was soon followed by bingeing and then purging occasionally and then more frequently.
I vividly recall one night of taking a bucket outside my sliding door into the backyard and jamming my fingers down my throat, forcing myself to keep retching until I had thrown up all of that evening’s food rampage. I washed my hands off with the outdoor hose, slipped back into my bedroom, and hid the bucket in my closet. And then I waited in the dark and waited and waited until I was certain the rest of my family was asleep. Heart pounding, hoping the coast was clear, I tip-toed down the hall, carrying the bucket into the bathroom. Locking the door behind me, I flushed my stomach’s contents down the toilet. It took three flushes to get rid of all the bits and pieces, adding angst to angst, as I held my breath after each flush – waiting for the tank to fill – allowing a reasonable period of time before flushing again – all the while praying no family member would wake. I then snuck from the bathroom to the laundry room to wash out the bucket terrified the water running sounded like a waterfall in the quiet of the house. This whole “process” took hours. Hours. And that was in the early stages of my bulimia. It got so much uglier over the ensuing 11 years – so much uglier – as I share in my poem, “Bulging Eyes,” below.
And then one day, 11 years into my bulimia, I read a small column in a Newsweek magazine. It was about a woman who’d been eating huge quantities of food and throwing it up — for seven years. I remember the feeling of, “Oh my God — I’m not the only one,” followed by, “Oh my God, if she stopped, maybe I can, too.”
That was over 34 years ago, and it marked the beginning of my ending the binge/purge cycle that had ruled my life. I’m thrilled to share that I succeeded in learning to re-eat and stopping this cycle. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until 2003 that I fully understood…
bulimia was only a symptom.
In 2003 one of my loved ones entered residential treatment for alcoholism, and my “true” recovery began.
The reason I didn’t fully “recover” from my eating disorders back in the day was because I’d never healed my heart, which I now understand really means to heal my brain. I did not do what I needed to do to unravel the deeply embedded brain maps of unhealthy coping skills I’d developed to block out, cope with, and shout down the voices. The voices that never stopped chattering about my faults, my guilt, my shame, my inability to stop the sexual assault that’d occurred when I was a teenager, and my inability to stop bingeing and purging in spite of the horrors it involved. Competing for mind space were the voices that tried to help me dodge, control, make up for, get ahead of, minimize, rationalize, condone and condemn various loved ones’ drinking behaviors. The voices that eventually settled on attacking me for not being important enough or good enough to make them stop drinking. I didn’t fully recover because I didn’t realize my anorexia and then my bulimia were only symptoms, “the soothers,” for these deeper, unresolved issues.
Instead, back in the day, I thought learning to re-eat meant recovery, so I quietly celebrated each year of not bingeing and purging with silent kudos to self at Thanksgiving, and set my sights on stopping my loved ones’ drinking because that would fix things. And then I became a workaholic and a super mom and an impressively organized, busy person who could get more done in a day than most people. Eventually I turned into a hawk who saw every move of every person and inserted herself as often as she felt necessary into every situation in order to “fix” the various alcoholics | alcohol abusers and the scores of others whose lives were crumbling in the wake of their own and my secondhand drinking. All the while the mind chatter grew louder, and I’d find myself exploding with anger, which I justified as my right given their drinking behaviors.
So Why Didn’t I Study and Write About Eating Disorders Instead of my Focus on Alcohol Misuse and Secondhand Drinking?
There are two reasons. First of all, I thought I was “fixed” way back in the day because I wasn’t bingeing and purging and had developed a good relationship with food.
Bulimia was only a symptom. For me, it was recovering from secondhand drinking that finally quieted the voices and opened a world that’s beyond my wildest dreams, like rock climbing shown in this photo.
And the second reason relates to what I stated above, “Competing for mind space were the voices that tried to help me dodge, control, make up for, get ahead of, minimize, rationalize, condone and condemn various loved ones’ drinking behaviors. The voices that eventually settled on attacking me for not being important enough or good enough to make them stop drinking.” As the National Institute of Mental Health explains it in its piece on Eating Disorders, “Researchers are finding that eating disorders are caused by a complex interaction of genetic, biological, behavioral, psychological, and social factors.”
As I shared in my “Secondhand Drinking Recovery” story shared with the Center For Open Recovery, it was my recovery from secondhand drinking that finally quieted the voices, opening a world that’s beyond my wildest dreams.
Though my story is no longer accessible on their site, I shared it in hopes someone else struggling with eating disorders or secondhand drinking finds their own “Oh my God — I’m not the only one” moment and the whisper of hope, “Oh my God, if she stopped, maybe I can, too.”
Eating Disorders, Secondhand Drinking Recovery Resources
For eating disorders
I have not studied eating disorders the way I’ve studied addiction and secondhand drinking and the myriad of related issues. However, I find these two articles very interesting: “How Snack Foods Affect the Brain” and “Food Addiction: Escaping the Voracious Cycle.”
Check out the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) website for a host of information and help resources. NEDA was formed in 2001, when Eating Disorders Awareness & Prevention (EDAP) joined forces with the American Anorexia Bulimia Association (AABA) – merging the largest and longest standing eating disorders prevention and advocacy organizations in the world. The merger was the most recent in a series of alliances that has also included the National Eating Disorder Organization (NEDO) and the Anorexia Nervosa & Related Disorders (ANRED). Additionally, February 21 – 27 is National Eating Disorders Awareness Weeks so you may find additional information searching that topic.
For secondhand drinking
As for secondhand drinking, this website (BreakingTheCycles.com) has a host of articles on the subject. Check out the category, Help for Families | Secondhand Drinking | Codependency. You may also consider purchasing my eBook, Quick Guide to Secondhand Drinking: the Phenomenon That Affects Millions. It’s available through any of the eReader retailers. Here’s the link to amazon kindle version.
_______________________________
BULGING EYES
The clerk knows her by name and
makes small talk as she rings up
$14.98 of candy, cream puffs, a 32-oz.
Slurpee and those to-die-for barbeque chips.
The girl is at the conversation and misses the
clerk’s double-take, her cue that her
answer’s not jiving with the question.
But she can’t hear very well;
the Voice has started its volley with SELF—
“You said it was the last time!” | “It’s not that much.”
“Paper or plastic?” the clerk asks.
“Plastic,” she says, as she drops the two pennies into the cup by the register.
Robotically, she scoops up the bag,
glances over her shoulder with the haunted
look of someone prodded at gunpoint, and
tears the wrapper off the ice cream sandwich.
The Voice is now venomous | “You weren’t going to do it, again, dammit!
The girl jerks her car door open, looking like the
bride after the groom feeds her the cake,
cream puffs now smeared around the edges of her mouth.
She tosses the bag onto the passenger’s seat and
paws through the food wrappers.
It feels like Christmas when she finds her
brother’s old sweatshirt.
Quickly, she pulls it over her head and unzips her skirt,
minutes before the choice is no longer her own.
Rote reactions leave no memory of the route traveled
until she’s startled by the squawk, “That’ll be $4.99
at the second window.” She registers a pleasant feeling
as the smell of the #2 special fills her car.
She heads to her last stop and parks her car around back.
Deadman walking, she enters the restroom—
no key dangling from a
tin can, guarded by a salesclerk, needed here.
She rams her hip into the door just below the
cockeyed doorknob—attention to its proper fit long overdue—and stumbles inside.
A graffiti-filled mirror, slashes of reflection missing, adorns one wall
facing an empty feminine napkin dispenser and stench-soaked urinal.
She glances at the toilet and inventories what she sees
in the detached manner of a policewoman recording a crime scene—
Rust-ringed toilet bowl. Urine-stained rim. Streaks of dried unknowns
snaking down the sides. Missing toilet seat. The Voice unleashes
a string of expletives about the weak, pathetic, spineless,
worthless piece of shit she is.
She knows. She’s heard it thousands of times before.
Methodically, she ties her hair back and takes a center
lineman’s position facing the toilet.
She stuffs three fingers down her throat
as far as the connective webbing allows, her teeth
scrapping the calluses on the backs of her knuckles.
The retching commences and continues until
the mound of regurgitated food is topped by a pool of yellow bile.
Trance-like, she washes her hands and ventures a look in the
Mirror – bulging eyes stare back.
Protruding veins worm their way along her temples and down her neck.
Puke streaks her chin; a strand of hair is stuck in the vomit.
She still can’t zip her skirt. Defiantly, she unties her hair, instead.
Moving towards the door, she hears her mother’s voice and
pulls the sleeve of her sweatshirt over her hand,
“Don’t touch the door knob, dear. Nasty germs. Nasty, nasty germs.”
©Lisa Frederiksen. Excerpt from her collection of poems, “Breathe Out.”
Lisa Frederiksen
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Oh my heavens, Lisa. SO POWERFUL. Your poem is brilliant, and painful and wrenching. It breaks my heart. While I don’t have a history with bulimia, I do understand overeating as a way to soothe. And your comments about perfectionism, workaholism and “super mom” all resonate. They’re all ways to try and manage life… to control it… to compensate for not feeling good enough.
Thank you so much for being such an honest voice. You are going to help a lot of people.
Thank you so much, Barb… bulimia was a horrific way to live, that’s for sure, although I had no idea how bad it was until I finally stopped the binge/purge cycle. For years, I’d have nightmares in which I’d binged and then wake up feeling my stomach in a panic. It gave me such an appreciation for what those with chemical addictions go through. And then, as you say, the perfectionism, workaholism and “super mom” is not the way to live, either Funny…one of the hanging placards I have on a door knob now is, “Don’t just do something, sit there,” and finally, I am 🙂 I’m really glad to hear you think this can help others.
OMG, your poem is brilliant and it was me too, so very similar … except my mother wasn’t anywhere near by… I stopped the bulimia when I married in my twenties only to pick up drugs and alcohol. Stopped the drugs just before I turned 30, equipped with with a new man. Didn’t get into recovery for alcoholism until 2005. I am an RN, have always worked;, have 2 beautiful daughters… all under the guise of “super mom/nurse/etc….” I don’t talk about this… all the while we have an epidemic of obesity, diabetes and addiction in all forms.
Thank you for sharing your story. This is important work you are doing, especially for sharing that recovery works. I am back in school, going to start talking too, thanks for showing me how…
Suzie
Thank you so much, Suzie, and congratulations on finding your way out and for your successes in spite of it! Your voice will add so much to these conversations and help others find their way out, as well. If you’d ever like to write a guest post, I’d love to publish it on my blog – just shoot me an email – lisaf@breakingthecycles.com
Take care, Lisa
Thank you so much, Suzie! And congratulations to you for all the work you’ve done in your recovery. And THANK YOU for sharing your story! ~Lisa
great poem and what a journey you went through…amazing story or courage and recovery.
Thank you so much, Tom – I really appreciate your comment.
Thanks so much for sharing your story! I really had no idea that you’ve gone through all of this. I’m sure it takes courage to tell your story, but so wonderful that you are helping others who may be in the same struggle. Your poem is amazing!! All I can say is, WOW, Lisa!
Thank you so much, Cathy. I really appreciate your comment.