Wednesday, January 14, 2015 // The Statement
6B
A
ll I felt was pain. I couldn’t breath. It felt as if some-
one had pulled my voice box out of my throat to its
maximum, only to let go and have it spring back as
if it were a plastic slinky.
I felt tears collapse around my eyes, but they might as
well have been tears of joy.
Eating, purging, living. For five years, I was living
through a binding cycle.
I don’t remember what made me start. All I know is that
once I had begun, I could not stop. I remember waking up
six months later and seeing someone completely different
in the mirror. And it felt good.
You are so lucky.
That was all I needed to hear. Months of wiping my sys-
tem clean of fats, sugars and nutrients, and I had reached
the point where my friends were envious of my body — scot-
free.
I should have realized things were too good to be true.
I vaguely remember passing out on multiple occasions. I
remember liking it. Just the mere sight of food disgusted
me, and watching people eat infuriated me.
My metabolism must have slowed dramatically, because
not long after, I hit the point where a lack of food didn’t
affect me. But even a tinge of it did. After one full meal, in
my mind, it was as if numbers on the scale had shot up. My
days were dominated by trying to retain food in my system
without reverting back to who I had been before. Because I
would rather do anything than take a step back when I had
worked so hard.
People stopped complimenting me. People called me
sick.
That’s the thing: I didn’t purge to prove something to
them. I purged to prove something to myself. I wanted to
prove to myself that I could be beautiful. For so long, so
many people had labeled me based on my frame. I needed it
to end. I had had enough of standing by and listening as my
classmates, uncle, parents, cousins cajoled at the fact that I
was “chubby.” I didn’t want to look in the mirror any longer
and think I would be nothing more than plus-sized.
In college, I stopped. It wasn’t out of realizing that I
didn’t need to build an image of myself based on a perfect
picture. It wasn’t even that I was forced to. After all these
years, I looked the way I wanted to. I physically did not
need to lose any more weight. In a way, I had done what I
needed to do to get me to the place where I wanted to be.
And now, I could move on with my life. I could run (it sure
was easier!) to stay fit, and I could start fresh with trying
to eat healthier. I finally had a fair chance at being in good
shape.
It wasn’t quite the end of it, though.
It’s been four years since I stuck two fingers down my
throat, but every once in a while, like the past usually does,
it all creeps back up. As I sat on my best friend’s bed, wag-
ging my legs back and forth, waiting for my time in front
of the mirror on the eve of this new year, she reminded me
of how I had constantly denied that anything was wrong
when she nagged me about my eating habits in high school.
In our junior year, she had repeatedly asked if I regurgi-
tated meals, and I had blatantly (and, in my mind, convinc-
ingly) denied.
You really needed the wake-up call, to make you stop all
that bullshit, she said as 2015 headed our way. But did I? It
wasn’t like I stopped because I was told I should. I stopped
because, in my mind, I had gotten what I wanted. I suc-
ceeded. There was nothing left to be gained.
Hello! I won.
The strategically choosing bathrooms, turning on fau-
cets, hiding behind music to carefully calculate how I was
to expunge meals had worked. For half a decade, I played a
game until it became my life, and then when the game had
gotten spiritless, and rather futile, I stopped playing.
Yet, in letting my pride take over my memories, I forget.
I forget that there were more than a few dinner table
meals with my family spent just waiting to dash out of
my seat and into a secluded bathroom far away where no
one would dare to look for me. In friends’ houses, I would
always make it a point to leave soon after meals. I would
cringe and then shake off the feeling of guilt before it set in
too deep; I didn’t have a choice, after all. Restaurants, they
were often the easier ones; I couldn’t really feel bad when I
didn’t know the chef behind the plate.
Sure, it’s been four years since I stuck two fingers down
my throat, but now I know that as much as I can hold
my head up high, there is no way out. I am cursed into
examining nutrition labels and counting calories. There
will never be a day when the numbers on a weighing scale
mean nothing.
Nowadays, I joke about it. I joke about how my half-
wits led me to believe that purging was the solution to my
problems. I wave off any consequential flashes of sympa-
thy thereafter. Whenever someone slightly suggests that
I might need help, I laugh, smile, and do everything but
reveal the knots in my stomach. Every day, I try to make
myself believe the person I am conquers my weight — only
to realize that I’m stuck flipping that two-sided coin. My
mood is so gravely determined by food. Whenever I feel
disconsolate, all I want to do is eat. And 30 minutes and
1,000 calories later, all I want to do is expunge the evidence
that it ever happened in the first place.
Purging was never the disease. No, the disease is always
believing that everyone else’s opinions are your truth.
I was a gifted student, a good daughter, and talented.
Why didn’t this matter? Chances are that I will never have
the answer. All I know is that it took me starvation and
endured exercise to be able to believe that I had any merits
at all.
It’s astonishing how much it hurts to hear the incre-
dulity in people’s voices when I tell them that used to be
overweight. No way, they go. In a way, it undermines all the
struggle that went into what made me into the more confi-
dent and less anxious person that I am today. After all these
years, I still struggle to accept that my eating patterns
(don’t dare call it a disorder!) did anything other than good.
It all feels like another lifetime ago. Writing this, I don’t
feel like I’m writing about me but instead writing about a
stranger I’ve been staring at from the outside. I can’t imag-
ine there ever being a time when I was that insecure and
that reactive to people’s opinions. I promise you that things
are different now than they were those four years ago. I
am happy, ambitious and in love. I see a greater future for
myself independent of how I look, but acquired on the basis
of my accomplishments.
But I will always believe that I am here today because
of the choice I made in my basement bathroom to change
myself for good.
Let me tell you — in the moment, it was worth every last
hurl.
I am a bulimic.
ILLUSTRATION BY MEGAN MULHOLLAND
Personal Statement: Don’t call it a disorder
by Amrutha Sivakumar, Online Editor