Starving For Help

Chapter Five

           Trying to hide my secret life from my family was becoming more difficult than I had anticipated. My 6 year old began commenting on how I never eat. He would frequently ask me why I'm not having dinner with the family. He even told my mother that he never sees me eat. Hearing my innocent child- so confused, with such concern in his little voice. That was hard to explain to him because it hurt like hell to lie. So, I had to start eating at least a few meals a week in front of him. Usually just dinner. The first night he saw me sit down at the dinner table with a plate of food in front of me he seemed so happy. Which made it even harder to have to go upstairs afterwards and throw it up in the toilet. That was when my husband discovered my secret.

I usually turn the faucet on to drown out sounds of vomiting. Sometimes I just immediately get in the shower after eating so no one hears me throwing up. Well, that night I guess I just went so long without getting caught, I got a little careless. I came downstairs after being in the bathroom for a good while. My son mentioned that my eyes looked like I was crying and my breath had smelled minty. I laughed it off and told him I had been chewing gum. I was nervous inside though because I knew exactly what he meant. My eyes were always blood shot and glassy after forcing myself to puke and my face usually swells up around my eyes and cheeks for a few minutes. When I looked over at my husband sitting on the couch, he had a very odd look on his face. He seemed concerned but almost in an angry way. 

That night after the kids were all in bed, he confronted me. He asked me why I was making myself throw up after eating dinner. I froze. I just sat there for a moment trying to come up with something to say. I wasn't prepared for this so I had no lie to this question! How did he know? How long has he known? Why is he not more upset than this? Do I tell him the truth? Of course not! After wracking my brain for a few seconds I was finally able to speak. So I lied. I told him I wasn't throwing up. I just had an upset stomach. I said he must've been hearing things. He told me he had heard me the night before, too. For some reason, I still don't know why, but I got mad. He didn't seem as concerned as I thought he would be and that kind of hurt a little. Part of me wondered why I had even been keeping this secret from him. he clearly didn't seem too upset about it. Especially if he heard me the previous night also and he said nothing to me about it... Why isn't he worried about me?

We left it at that and didn't speak of it again until a couple weeks later. He came to me again and confronted me about it. Only this time, he appeared to be curious and wanted to understand what I was dealing with. I didn't expect myself to get emotional about it with him. He knew I had gone through this years ago. I thought it would actually be an easy conversation to have with him, but I broke down and I just lost it. I couldn't stop crying for hours. I had finally said it out loud. I had admitted that my demon was back. I had relapsed. I was suffering from Anorexia and Bulimia for over a year- in secret. I knew it would be difficult but I didn't think it would be a dose of reality in the way that it was. Saying it out loud made it real. I knew that he wouldn't know how to handle it. He wasn't very good in emotional situations. Especially ones that he couldn't wrap his head around. He said he wanted to help me. But I knew that he couldn't. Not as long as she was living in my head. He just kept repeating that he loved my body. Even in that moment when I was most vulnerable, I still felt as if he was only telling me what he thought I needed to hear. Why would say anything else? All I could think was "yeah right, that's what you're supposed to say." I mean honestly, did he expect me to believe him? What else could he have said? I couldn't bring myself to accept it. How could he actually think i'm not fat? Maybe it's his eyes that are messed up- not mine. Either way, our conversation ended with a hug and a kiss even though I told him I wasn't capable of promising him that I would stop. I couldn't even stop for me. How could I focus on anyone else, now? All he did was make it harder for me to hide it from him.

For a few days he would stand outside of the bathroom door and just listen. I always knew when he was there so I was more careful. I didn't want him to try to stop me. I knew I couldn't be stopped. She wouldn't allow it. I couldn't take the cold words she'd speak to me from inside of my head. The more I tried to ignore it and overcome this on my own, the louder the voice would get. Sometimes it got so loud that I would lock myself in the bathroom and just cry, begging it to stop. I would scream in to a bath towel and contemplate ways to make it end. It was always there.

At that point, I got tired of sneaking around. So I stopped eating again- all together. It was getting easier and easier to ignore the hunger. After a few days, I wouldn't feel hungry at all. I wouldn't feel anything. Almost as if my body would just go numb. I liked it. It made me feel powerful. Like for once, I was in control.