Be Careful What You Wish For

Like any good bulimic, I've always dreamt of developing anorexia nervosa. To a bulimic, anorexia is like the perfect older sibling--pretty, gets away with everything, popular, loved the most, in control. The absolute antithesis of bulimia, an illness so uncontrollable and destructive that it is often treated with DBT (a method created for those with Borderline Personality Disorder and repeated suicide attempts). Although I hate to admit it, especially to the girls that I know personally battling with real anorexia and loathing every day, in the past when I purge I've often attempted to emulate anorexic behavior like a wannarexic would. I have stared at the bodies of emaciated models and I've attempted every fad diet, including the ABC. All of this did not come naturally, all of this was a sad attempt at purging my last binge and trying to "get it right this time," always it crashed horribly down by at most the second day resulting in a binge that contorted my belly and had me burning rubber towards the nearest toilet.

But lately, my binges have stopped being binges. What once was 7,000 calorie bouts of Great Grains cereal and bagel chips became 1,500 calories I ate during three family meals. Became 1,000 calories eaten sparingly throughout the day and washed down with fourteen laxatives. I didn't really realize at first that I had stopped legitimately "fuck-it-all" binging because 800 calories now feels just as guilt-wrenching as 8,000 calories once did.

And my purges aren't quite purges anymore, either. I guess they stopped when I decided to give up vomiting. Well maybe "decided" is not the right word--I went from a family vacation where I was watched so obsessively that I could only purge after midnight splurges at the hotel vending machine or in the lake by my grandmother's Quaker retirement community (the latter got me in a lot of trouble as I was "missing" for an hour, and what ever spontaneous lock down that had started for me was doubled down) to college with paper-thin walls and shared bathrooms. I just kind of stopped because it felt like it was no longer an option. To compensate I guess my restrictions have grown in intensity, the threat of being unable to undo my intake looming above my head with every intake. When past fasts have ended with giant compensatory binges, I have done 24-hour water fasts twice within the last five days, with plans to compensate for tonight's 3-Lunabar-"binge" with another fast tomorrow. On nearly 30 hours of no food I went to a hot yoga class on Sunday, followed by a measly 140 calorie Cliff Zbar. And I felt guilty and ashamed to have eaten six pieces of brown rice vegetarian sushi (generously around 300 calories).

I have cut out meat entirely. I have thrown out or given away all of my now "unsafe" protein bars; safe for now is a box of 160 calorie per high fiber oatmeal packets (the time taken to zap the servings to life is resistant to impulse binges). I felt bad about my usual safety snack of frozen grapes. I am scheming to do all of my future eating in public (where I can feel ashamed for being such a fatty eating), alone (so I can eat with all of my 16-bite, little pieces rituals), and at the dining hall (so I can limit my meals to salads and fruit smoothies and halved grapefruit). When I open my microfridge now it jingles with glass bottles of Tazo tea.

At the beginning of this summer I was clinically overweight and binging every day. This weekend my mother (who has made comments about my getting in shape by excersise before) made comments about how I should stop losing weight now, that I've lost enough. I know I look better; I fit into my tight "fantasy" clothes now and I can see the beginnings of the rungs of my ribcage on the sides of my chest. But it is not enough. And I no longer have a number, no more matching a celebrity BMI, no more reaching a perfect set of measurements.

I could not at this weight possibly be clinically considered an anorexic, but I now meet most of the other criteria. My behaviors are no longer bulimic, at the least. And I don't really want to be anorexic, not another life-threatening mental illness, not really... Not the reality of the beast itself...

But I've wished for this so hard and for so long. And the rush of pleasure I momentarily sense when I shed another pound is quickly becoming addictive, something I crave even more than food maybe. And I don't know how thin I can be. How thin I will be.