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Bulimia is not an illness; it's a way of life

Bulimia is not an illness; it's a way of life.


It is my life. That is how I live it. Scared of food, obsessed with food, intoxicated by food. Eating it knowing that I will throw it up in a minute. Eating with that knowledge that keeps me safe - the knowledge that keeps me fat.


Bulimia is like any disease in that it begins to define you. I choose to be defined by bulimia, and yet, it is not a choice.


I choose to cut myself. Sometimes I grapple with my emotions and force myself to stop...but if the knife is there, it's so easy and everything gets better. And yet, when people ask me why, I cannot explain it.

To other people, I am just a girl on pills, a girl who can't sleep through the night, a girl that writes strange things and sees the world in a different way. I am a girl with scars on her arms. I am a girl who thinks she is fat. A girl who worries too much.
I am an attention seeker.


When I went to therapy last year for my eating disorder, I made progress, but still I didn't fully commit. I didn't do all the tasks that were set for me, I didn't attend all my sessions. I think, perhaps I didn't fully believe that recovery was possible because it was just such a stable part of my life.

With this latest relapse over the last few weeks, I have come to accept that nothing has been fixed and I have not been cured, and that really, I was so possessed by bulimia that nothing remained to fight it.
Now, I have this blog, and I know that every time I fail, every time I am weak, every time I disgrace myself, I will have to chart it here, and it will haunt me.

I am a bulimic. I self-harm. I have depression.
I am removing the 'I' from all those sentences.

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