One of the topics I will bring up now and again in various posts will be the fact I had an eating disorder. I say I am an eating disorder survivor because by the time I finally received mental and physical health, I was on a quick decline to death…either by heart failure or suicide. When all was said and done, I was bulimic for 7-years. At my worst, towards the end, I was throwing up 3-6 times a day, 7-days a week. My stomach had stopped functioning properly. I had what was called gastricparesis. Essentially food was staying in my stomach and not moving through to my intestines in a timely manner. So much vomiting had damaged the muscles around the stomach. In fact, it was 5 times slower than the normal digestive rate. As a result, my body was absorbing all of the calories and fat causing me to gain roughly 30 pounds…the exact opposite of what a person with an eating disorder intends when they start. On top of that, all of the vomiting had eroded my esophogus and some teeth enamel causing mouth aches and heartburn. I lived with constant reflux and heartburn. It became part of my daily life so much so that I ceased to notice the pain. The worst physical effect of ED though was that it created a Level 2 Heart problem in one of my valves. I had actually damaged my heart. While the damage might not be permanent, it will take a long time of taking care of myself to get it back to “normal.” All of those problems, and my doctor told me I was “lucky” considering how long and how bad I had been abusing myself. And that is just the physical side of the problem.

The emotional impact of an eating disorder lasts a lifetime. It took years to get to the point I was at in 2005 and 2006. It will take many more years to eradicate the dizzying thought processes that got me to that point in the first place. I liken the whole thing to an addiction…a deadly addiction. Every day I would tell myself that I was hurting myself, but after every fight with my husband, every mistake I made, overeating, etc… whatever fuel I could use to justify the abuse, up come the food and bile into the toilet. I would go through a cycle of self-loathing, desire to vomit, vomiting, release, momentary euphoria and then SHAME. I could never escape the shame. But an eating disorder becomes one’s dirty little secret. Something you sickly hold on to because its yours. A control you have. Something you know that no one else knows.

Reading this now, now that I haven’t thrown up in a year, the whole thing seems demented. Dysfunctional. And it is. There is no way around the fact that I have been sick and dysfunctional almost my entire adult life. My first marriage unraveled as a result as well. Not of the eating disorder (or disease as my ex-husband liked to call it) but because of what caused and fueled the disorder and much of that started when he and I dated in high school and college.

Ok, I’m going to have to continue this post later as I need to get some sleep. There is a lot to this story I can explore in later posts.