Guest Blogger: As It Turns Out, I Wanted To Live

As it turns out, I wanted to live.

“Six months from now you will either be dead or be in recovery. Your choice.”

I wasn’t until a doctor looked me straight in the eye and said that sentence to me that I realized deep down, I was wanted to live. I don’t know what it was that snapped inside me, some primal survival instinct or what, but after so many years of slow self destruction this sentence straightened my spine and I unwittingly began to crawl out of the deepest, slipperiest well I have even been stuck in. I was so deep in the well at that point that the sunlight was a mere pinprick of light so very far away. Could I do it?

I feel like I should introduce myself as if this is an AA meeting.
My name is Stephanie and I am Eating Disordered. I say AM because like an alcoholic who is in recovery but must always be vigilant, so must I. I no longer exhibit disordered behavior, no more binging or purging, but I carry it with me always. What was once a burden is now a badge of courage. To me, anyway. It’s what makes me me. I survived but I very nearly didn’t.

Having a eating disorder is like having a demon on your shoulder. One who hisses to you You are bad. You are fat. Fat is bad. You are bad. You are weak. If you dare so much as put that food to your lips I will punish you. An eating disorder is part of you…but separate and full in control. It dictates everything, runs every part of your life. Those words hissed in your ear are repeated over and over and it seemed as if there was no way to silence the demon. (there is, I promise you) It controlled where I could go – will you have access to get rid of or avoid food – to what I could do. It ran my life.

Every night I would pray to be healthy.

Alright, that’s a lie. Every night I would pray to be in control. I would pray to trade my eating disorder for another one. I prayed my Bulimia would magically turn to Anorexia. To just not eat all…heaven. That’s control. That’s CLEAN. Bulimia was weak. Bulimia was dirty. Bulimia was a failure. I couldn’t even be ED right.
Bulimia for me was a cycle of feeling bad and punishing myself with food, eating so much my skin pulled and tore along my sides. Ten, twelve times a day sometimes. Then I would sit with it. The punishment of being bad. Being weak. Until the panic became too much and I had to let it go.

Finally the cleansing ritual of purging. The violence of letting it all out. And then the smooth flatness of my stomach. Purified. Never mind my hair falling out, the shaking feeling of weakness, or the terrifying reality that my heart being weakened by the second. I was pure. For at least a few minutes I had been purified, until it would beginn all over again. I flunked out of high school because of it, I managed to charm my way into college and skated along until a costume designer outted me to the head of my school. My head and my waist were the same measurement. The Dean gave me a choice, be kicked out of school or go into the hospital and get treatment with no academic repercussions.

I went into the hospital. For just long enough to pacify everyone. It took several more health scares and hospital visits before I truly began to make the choice to live.

I know I will never look in the mirror and see what I really truly look like. My vision is skewed, distorted and I have come to accept that. I don’t think about it to often. I eat healthy and can enjoy a good meal and a dessert without panic. I notice that I can easily slip into seemingly benign old behaviors without realizing it though, I weigh myself a bit too often perhaps. Things that wouldn’t be a big deal at all if I hadn’t been eating disordered in the first place. I had to give myself a good talking to the other day at a restaurant that listed the caloric count of each meal on the menu and I felt that old panic. I notice that when celebrities get too thin that while the world is discussing how they are too thin, for a fleeting moment I am jealous.

Disordered thinking is always knocking at the door, but it’s different now. A whisper not a command. It is easily silenced.

By and large I am free. Free. It’s phenomenal.

My body is amazing. (Yours is too.) My body despite years of abuse, despite burst blood vessels, despite bloody throats, and despite two heart ‘episodes’ grew a healthy baby. That’s a miracle, it’s so miraculous in fact, that I no longer can hate my body…no matter how big or small. How puffy or flabby or toned. I am in awe that something I abused for so long took over and gave me the biggest blessing I have ever known. My son. I marvel that I was so wrapped up in myself and that I believed my weight had a direct correlation to my worth.

I know now that thin doesn’t equal happiness. Fat isn’t bad. Anorexia is not ‘better’ than Bulimia, they are both deadly serious They are fraternal twin demons, both equally evil and destructive. Most importantly I know now that food isn’t the answer to a prayer, it’s not love, or punishment or anything other than food.

It certainly isn’t redemption.

Loving your self is redemption.

Stephanie Stearns Dulli aka Minky {moo}is a professional actress and comedian whose blogging has been featured in  the New York Times, DCMetroMoms and Washington Family Magazine.  She Twitters her life away @MinkyMoo and blogs at Dial M for Minky: Motherhood & Mimosas where she posts an insane amount of pictures of her son, celebrates her many embarrassing moments, and blames clowns for all the evil in the world.