I wake up and for a moment I think it was just a dream…but then I turn in bed and the nausea hits instantly. I break out in a sweat.
When I tell people that I have an eating disorder they often don’t believe me. ‘But you’re so slim!’
When I lose the battle it’s like I am consumed by the feelings. Food is a drug to me. Since I was 11 I have had bulimia. An unfortunate add-on to my BPD.
I sit up on the side of my bed and take a breath. My sides hurt. I run through in my head all of the ways that I know to ‘counter’ the night before, but deep down I know that nothing is a fix. It now takes all of my effort not to give in and let it happen again. For a day, two days, a week, I am ok. And then something slips, and I wake up and think that it was all just a dream – HOPE that it was a dream.
If people have a broken leg then you can clearly see that they might be in pain, or that they might struggle with otherwise easy things. When you have mental health issues, facing a backlash every day when people can’t understand why you are quiet, or why you don’t have the energy to do something, is exhausting.
I want so much to be ‘normal’. To wake up and not have this creature follow me around all day, take up my thoughts. I go to therapy and I sit and I fear, what if this is it for me – what if every day for the rest of my life is like this? The panic sets in and then I am drawn to food, to drink and to drugs. To anything that will take my mind away from how I feel.
I don’t look at people in the same way any more. I see myself in the mirror, and I know that I don’t look unwell. I don’t look ‘sick’. Sometimes I wish that I did.