I feel full. A
strange and weird feeling I haven’t felt in a long time. I
can actually feel my satiety level coming to a point where
I don’t want food. I wonder if it is because my blood sugar
is so high my body’s telling my brain no more or if perhaps
it’s because of the book I’m reading “feeding the hungry
heart” it talks about conscientious eating which is
something I haven’t done for a looooooong time. I haven’t
been eating to nourish myself in….. maybe forever? When I
was young I ate because I was bored and unhappy, fat and
lonely. Food was my friend, my escape, and my release. When
I got older, I still ate when I was bored and unhappy but I
also began eating to fill a void. An unhappiness and
emptiness I couldn’t put my finger on. My freshman year I
surrounded myself with people at all times and for once in
my life I stopped eating. I was living life and putting
myself out there, I had become a social butterfly and in
doing so had left my old unhealthy ways back in my cocoon.
Or so I thought. Nothing lasts forever though and as soon
as the people left and eventually people do have to leave
and there has to be some time when you are alone. It is in
that alone time that the thoughts and behaviors I had
thought long since banished crept back into my mind and my
life. I suddenly realize why celebrities, especially those
doing drugs or trying to quit doing drugs constantly
surround themselves with people and parties, because it is
in the absence of sound, the vacuum of silence that the
thoughts we want to pretend don’t exist, the parts of
ourselves we try to keep hidden and ignored emerge. The
darkness lies in each of us, that emptiness that cries to
be filled with food, or drugs, sex, or money. It’s a pit in
the bottom of your stomach, it screams you’re not good
enough, I’m not good enough and we try to fill it or empty
it, numb it, or ignore it, suppress it in some way, any
way. Anything to make that sound “I’m not good enough” go
away. And so we eat, we eat until it hurts, until it hurts
so bad that no other hurt can exist and then all the focus
is on the walls of your stomach being pushed into the
surroundings until like a beach whale you are surely going
to die. Then we start to starve it, angry at ourselves for
giving in, angry at the voice for pushing us to it, we
start to starve the part of ourselves we deem unworthy. We
with hold food or insulin, force ourselves to exercise.
Anything in an attempt to ease the guilt and silence the
voice that now just has one more thing to scream about. For
a diabulimic there’s an added layer, the layer of guilt
that comes with knowing you’re killing your body in
multiple ways. You starve your body of insulin, the one
substance it truly craves, and you’re entire being changes.
The serotonin level in your brain starts depleting and you
find yourself loosing all motivation, hope, happiness. The
world starts to fade, almost as if someone has found the
tint button on your life and just turns it down, just a few
shades, nothing to noticeable, but the yellows are a little
less yellow, the red’s a little lack luster, everything
seems to have a slightly shade of grey to it. As if the
world itself is a little sad. Your body starts peeing, a
lot. Trying to rid your blood of the poisonous and
eventually lethal ketones you become dehydrated as your
body tries desperately to fight the effects of what you’re
doing. As you become more and more dehydrated your liver
starts to back up [this is why most diabulimics have what’s
known as a fatty liver, myself included] and your poor
kidneys will strain to keep your blood clean. Many
diabulimics will experience a low kidney function at some
point as they get older due to all this strain. Dehydrated
and grumpy you will start to guzzle water, soda, ice tea,
pickle juice for christ’s sakes; ANYTHING to quench this
thirst. But it just won’t go away, like a cursed pirate you
drink and drink but still you need more. So thirsty you’re
sure that nothing will ever make you feel normal again.
Your skin starts to dry out to and you start to relish the
time you spend washing your hands, your fingers lapping up
the cold water like a drink for your dry cracked skin. Back
to your bed you’re dizzy now, standing up is a lot of
effort you start walking to the bathroom in the dark
because the florescent light is too bright it hurts your
eyes. You want to sleep for an eternity but after an hour
your bladder is full to the limit and if you don’t rush to
the bathroom you’re going to wet yourself. After standing
at the sink for what feels like an eternity just letting
cold water wash over your hands and then face you sink back
into your bed. Something sharp is stabbing at your side but
you literally don’t have the energy to pull it out or even
roll over. You wonder perhaps you’re going to die here.
You’re still so thirsty even though the gallon of super
market water you purchased at lunch is already almost gone.
You wonder about this thirst, you’re dry tongue parched and
searching for relief. You think about yesterday out to
lunch with your best friend, trying to decide what to
order, you think to hell with it I’ll get pizza and skip
insulin tonight and tomorrow, I already forgot this
morning’s anyways. You think about that afternoon in the
mirror at home pinching your muffin top, standing straight
and seeing the top of your thighs and hating how they rub
together, hands outstretched fingertips reaching as long as
they can go and then shaking, flapping as if you were
possessed by satan and just staring at the flaps of skin
under your arms, I shake like jello, jiggly like jello you
scream at the mirror, scream at the ugly reflection. Not
you, not the writer or the friend, the daughter or
girlfriend, but the ugly reflection that you see everyday,
the you that you can’t understand how no one else sees. Or
more accurately the you that you KNOW everyone else sees
and no one will acknowledge for fear that you’ll go off the
deep end and jam a needle full of insulin into your neck or
something.. You can trace the crazy train from the meal of
guilt, which for you now basically means anything with
white flour or white sugar or anything that tastes good
really, to the body check and judgment time in the mirror
pulling yourself apart piece by piece until your nothing
but a mass of disappointing body parts, to this moment,
laying in bed head spinning, black spots in your vision
every time you try to stand, an existence narrowed down to
the walk to and from the bed to the bathroom and back
again. It was this moment that was like gold for ED, the
moment he waited for, my life hanging in an undefined
balance, I could see the invisible line in his hungry eyes.
He stood just above my shoulder waiting, silently pushing
me forward, one more drink of Gatorade, I was already high,
what was one more sugary sports drink? And there it was, in
his eyes, on my tongue, staring back at me in my
reflection, all of it, that need, that desire, hunger,
emptiness, all of it craving it, a thirst that can’t be
quenched.
October, 12th, 2009. 12:31 AM.
--------------------
It’s
when I stand up that I know there’s a problem. My head
starts to spin and for a second my world goes black. I get
so scared, wondering if this is the moment, the time I’ve
pushed my body too far, if this will be the moment I wake
up with a dialysis IV in my arm and the news that my
kidneys have finally given out. Every time I tell a new
doctor that I have 100 percent kidney function he/she feels
it necessary to add, “for now” as if I might forget that
I’m playing a waiting game, waiting for my body to turn on
me once and for all, after all the destruction and chaos
I’ve caused it, it’s just waiting for the moment it gets to
destroy my life, throw me into the same chaos. Like for
even a mili second I can forget that I won’t ever make it
to 80 like the normal person, I’ll be lucky to hit 50 and
am most likely looking at 40. If I were my mom’s age I’d be
in the last decade of my life, I’d be one foot in the
grave, staring death straight in the face. Although, who
are we kidding, I’m staring death in the face every fucking
day. I really thought I’d beat this, I thought I’d done it.
Made it to the other side of this disease, but I’m back in
the throws. Already thinking about the next time I’ll be
able to make it through a full 3 day cycle. I was already
planning out the next cycle first thing this morning. I
woke up with it on my mind, with Ed in my ears telling me
that I am fat, and that I better curb it now while I still
can. I try not to think about him, push him out of my head.
But he just circles my thoughts, whispering the same thing,
that if I were thinner, maybe I’d be good enough.
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content on Diabulimia Helpline is copyrighted © 2009 Erin
M. Akers and may not be copied or redistributed for any
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