Polly's Story
I don’t know what you were doing in 2005, but I was coming out of the shadows after living for 20 years with bulimia. I finally found the tools and support I needed to release my addictive binging and purging behaviors.
When I was 13 my family moved across the country and I enrolled in a new school 3 months before the end of 8th grade. Before we moved I had a lot of close friends and was friends with a lot of the “popular” kids. After we moved I had a hard time making friends and fitting in at my new school. I felt like a complete outsider because I didn’t know anyone and everyone had their “clicks”. The only people who would be nice to me were the unpopular girls. They were nice to me, but I felt as awkward as they did about fitting in. I missed my old friends a lot and was upset about not being able to make new friends and fit in at school so I blamed my parents for what they had done to my life. I started rebelling, got angry any time they tried to talk to me and totally isolated myself from them.
By the time I got to high school the only way I felt like I could fit in was to be thin. “Maybe if I was skinny I’d be popular,” I said. I was a competitive athlete and loved playing volleyball. I read an article about Olympic athletes who were bulimic so they could eat what they enjoyed. I thought I needed to be thin to fit in and if it was good enough for Olympic athletes, it could work for me. Being bulimic sounded like the best of both worlds; you could eat whatever you wanted to and not get fat. At first I thought of it sort of like a diet (weird logic, I know!). Little did I know my addiction to binging and purging would consume my life, cause me to ruin personal relationships (especially with my Mom) and put my body through 20 years of abuse. If it’s not already obvious why I’m sharing all this, let me get to the point. I’ve been there, done that. If you’re binging and purging so you don’t get fat you’re not alone. If you feel like you’re living a lie consumed by not getting fat to the point you either avoid food or binge and purge to keep from gaining weight I know what that feels like.
My Recovery Story
When I was 16 my Mom found out about my bulimia and tried to help me by taking me to an eating disorder group called Overeaters annonymous (OA). OA is a support group for people with all kinds of food disorders and is built upon the original 12-step model of Alcoholics Anonymous.
As I sat through my first meeting a woman of around 22 who seemed to be glowing from the inside shared openly with the group. She revealed a lot about her tumultuous life with bulimia and anorexia and how she finally found a way to live her life without worrying about getting fat. I was moved to tears because it was the first time since I’d put my finger down my throat at 14 years old that anyone really knew what I was going through. It was profound to hear that someone else was as afraid of getting fat as I was, they didn’t want to live hiding out and they had all of the negative thoughts in their head. They had been through all of the crap I’d been overwhelmed by and didn’t know how to deal with.
I wish I could tell you I found instant recovery in that moment. Ha! I wish it were that easy. But I did feel like, “my life is worth living and will get better”. Recovery sounded a hell of a lot better than all the secrets, lies, self-abuse and sadness that I had been living in.