Breaking Up With Bulimia: My Story

Last updated 11 Dec 2017 . 5 min read



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This isn’t a sob story of how the entire world was crashing down on her. So be prepared This is a story that we all live every day. This is the story of the woman sitting next to you with a big smile plastered on her face. This is your story and mine. This will pass down to my daughters and their daughters. This story is an ode to the coven we call “womanhood”

“I was fat, I mean I still am. But I was like really fat in school. In school was where I met the love of my life too. He left me for this really skinny girl called Sanjam. That’s where it all began. I wanted to look thin. I wanted him to see that I could be her. This crazy obsession took me in front of the toilet right after I had chicken nuggets. I forced myself to puke it all out. You know how it feels? To look at yourself in the mirror after it, is the worst. Because you know exactly what has happened. You know the dizzy in your head. The puffiness in your eyes. You know that you have betrayed your body. That you are the perpetrator. It’s that realization that along with the world hurting you. You have joined the wagon.

After a point, I realized that I was entirely a different entity than my body. That I was constantly being abused externally and internally.
But all that realization didn’t help me at all. I remember going in bathrooms puking out the food I ate. I remember coming out of those puffy eyes. Mascara flowing on my face. I remember washing my face putting on some lipstick and a smile. Walking out in the arms of a man who aided my insecurities. I remember telling him that I was going through a very bad phase in life. He shrugged it off like it wasn’t a thing. I remember telling him again and again. It was the first and only time I asked for help.

Years passed on and my waist remained the same skinny. With a huge price to pay.
Not only did I realize that I had become weak, tired.I had lost all my strength in some bathroom of a restaurant I had pan fried noodles at. You know, it ran down so deep into my system that there was not even one meal that my body had digested. That this obsessiveness of looking perfectly thin had fueled my system, so much that I had made my peace with it. Like the food had set up anchors on my tongue and they had to come out. It was crazy. It was sad and it was me controlling this war against my body.It was very late that I realized that what I was doing was something that million other women had been through.It was very late that I was diagnosed with bulimia. The disease took a lot of time to heal. The constant urge to puke after having any meal was the most difficult thing to control.

At times I had wanted for someone to come in hold me and tell me that I needed to stop being the albatross around my own neck.
That it was okay to have that crème Brulee. That the organs in my body were at war with me. That I had created a conflict, a war zone. That I had massacred a million chances that my body was giving me to be alive.
That my body was fighting against odds for my survival. But no one ever came. So I had to pick myself up from that bathroom floor. Drag oneself to the shower. I had to eat and not puke. And trust me it wasn’t easy. But I had to do it.I had to heal the wounds and not press them because in wait for someone to come along and help me out of it I’d have created a corpse out of this beautiful body. So I did what I had to. I ate through it all. I nourished my body with whatever it needed.I took care of it, fueled it, caressed it. I loved my body. Because in this fight for survival that was my only armour...
Because how can you not? How can you subject your body, the only thing that you have ownership on go through so much just because you want to fit in a society of people at war with themselves.
There is another level of triumph that you feel when you are the one saving yourself.”

 

If you're having similar feelings or think that you might have bulimia, we want you to know that you're not alone. If you just need someone to talk to or know more about this disorder, join us at the MAALA Community of SHEROES, where our counselors and community members are waiting to talk to you and help you with what you're going through.
 
Read more about Bulimia here.

Also, read about Bulimia in India.


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Fakiraah Irfan


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