Growing up I was taught to be prim and proper.  Cross your ankles, not your legs; sit up straight; don’t say “fart” say “let one”.   For years I thought that “let one” was a noun and was that gaseous substance that was expelled after a large bowl of split pea soup and sauerkraut.  When a friend was describing her trip to California to my mom, she said she spent a few days at the bitch and immediately slapped her hand over her mouth.  My mom chuckled and said that sometimes things like that happen.  I was clueless.  What did I just miss?  I was a sheltered child, to say the least.

 All of my worldly knowledge came from Beverly Cleary and You Can’t do that on Television.  My parents never told me anything of substance.  When I asked where babies came from my mom told me to look up sex in the “S” encyclopedia.  When I got my first period I didn’t tell anyone since I thought that it wasn’t something that was supposed to be talked about.  In order to hind the evidence, I flushed everything down the toilet.  It wasn’t until my second cycle that my mom caught me only because I had accidentally clogged the toilet.  She congratulated me, why I’ll never know, and I begged her not to tell my father.  These things weren’t talked about.  Nothing was talked about.  I wasn’t learning anything about the real world.  And then sixth grade happened.

 The difference between sixth grade and all of my other years in school up to that point was the fact that my teacher encouraged us to watch TV.  Whenever there was an after school special on she would tell us to go home and tune in to channel thirteen.  Some of the specials were so good in her eyes that they deserved more attention and she would wheel in the TV with the top loading VCR and have us watch the special again while she talked over the overly-loud acting and point out points that she wanted us to remember.

 I learned about suicide.  I had never heard of suicide and the thought of another people killing themselves was something I would have never imagined.  It scared me.  For weeks afterwards I planned and plotted my own death.  The first thing that I knew I would have to do was give away my record collection.  That’s what happened in the after school special so that must be the proper step.  I decided that my sister would get my Thriller album and I would give Disco Duck and Mousercise to my brother though I knew he wouldn’t ever listen to them.  Then I would have to somehow acquire a motorcycle and find a cliff to ride it off of.  Plummeting to my death seemed thrilling and clean.

 I learned about cocaine addiction and alcoholism.  I learned about running away and how threatening a police officer can get you to do serious time.  I was learning about things that my parents wouldn’t have discussed with me even in hushed voices with the curtains drawn and the doors locked.  The world that they were protecting me from was so big and drunk and scary.  None of the specials I watched applied to me.  I knew that there was no cocaine abuse in my elementary school.  I didn’t suspect any of my friends were planning on offing themselves.  I enjoyed the specials for over-dramatic acting and the fact that it got me out of doing my homework for an extra hour after school.

 But then, out of the blue, an after school special was aired that gave me something I had been looking for for a while.  The special was Little Miss Perfect and was about a girl who was ripped away from her friends and old school because her mom married a rich old guy.  The mother was always telling the girl that she needed to go on a diet despite the fact that the girl was slender.  As I sat in front of the TV watching this special, the wheels in my head were spinning.  My mom was always complaining of how fat she was even though she just had a little belly from having three kids.  My mom loved to warn me to not get fat.  When we went jeans shopping, my sister always got the slim-fit jeans and I had to get the regular-fit ones.  To me that always meant that I was a bit on the chunky side.  My aunt told me my thighs were big when I was six-years-old.  That hurt.  But as I sat watching the show, I was given a perfectly easy and foolproof way of being forever thin.  I could just purge.  All I had to do was stick my finger down my throat and my food would come back up without any calories touching my fat cells.  As soon as the special was finished, I ran to the bathroom and tried it out.

 I locked the door behind me so no one would walk in on me and turned on the sink like the girl on TV.  I didn’t know why she turned on the water until we watched the special in class and my teacher pointed out that she did that to cover up her barfing sounds.  I knelt in front of the toilet and stuck my fingers down my throat.  Nothing happened at first.  I did it again but wiggled my fingers around the back of my throat to get my gag reflex to buck up against me.  Finally I wretched but not much came out since I was trying this on an empty stomach.  I took the knowledge of Little Miss Perfect and stored it away for many years.

 My eating habits in high school and college were normal.  I was never really conscious of my weight because I had a decent metabolism that kept me on the thin side.  I gained the freshman fifteen, but was able to take it off at my summer job of being a camp consoler.  I felt comfortable with my life.

 It wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that I felt my life spiraling out of control.  I was going through a divorce where my ex-in-laws were constantly harassing me by driving past my house to see if I had anyone over or to make sure my lawn was mowed.  My ex-husband would call me to tell me he’d supply the gun and the bullet, all I had to do was put the lead in my head (but I had no records to give away…).  I couldn’t take it any more.  I was trying so hard to keep things together but it seemed like everything was falling apart in my hands.  I turned out to be an emotional eater.  I binged on anything I could get my hands on.  As soon as I was done eating the first time I binged, I went into the bathroom and got rid of everything I just ate.  The act was so natural.  It was as if I had a full bladder and went to pee.  I ate too much so I threw up.  This set of actions was so comforting to me.  It made me feel like I could finally breathe again.

 After the emotional rollercoaster of the divorce was finished I thought my purging should be finished too.  I had more control over my life so did I really need to purge anymore?  Yeah, I did.  I still felt that that was the only control I had.  I even took it to the next level by limiting the amount of calories I consumed every day.  I went from an unlimited number to a very strict eleven hundred calories.  If I ate more than my allotted amount, I would get rid of the food.  It didn’t matter if I was at work or at home, I was going to throw up.  As an extra step, I bought a product called Colon Cleanse, which was soon dubbed Colon Blow.  It worked a little too well, to my delight, and would stay in my system for two or three days and for those days I didn’t have to worry about puking.

 Even as I was going through my self-destructive behavior I worried about the side effects my little habit had on my body.  I worried about the enamel on my teeth the most but when I went to the dentist, no comments were ever made.  I worried about my face becoming puffy like Little Miss Perfect’s.  I even worried about my esophagus rupturing like hers did in the show.  None of this stopped me.  Life was good, and I met the man of my dreams.

 Several months into my relationship with my now husband, I confided in him and told him my little secret.  He took the news well, I suppose, but also told me that if I wanted to be with him I had to stop throwing up.  I weighed the ultimatum out in my mind and decided that he was much more important to me than my throwing up so I stopped.  Just like that (snap), I stopped.  But I was far from cured.  Eating started to freak me out.  I would almost get a panic attack at his favorite restaurant, which was a buffet.  I stuck to the salad bar thinking that would give me peace of mind.  It really didn’t.  Slowly I watched my weight creep up despite healthy eating and exercise.  I was underweight and my body was going through a period of adjustment.  Plus I had been starving myself so my body started storing all of the fat just in case I would have to starve again.

 My throwing up ended almost ten years ago but I still obsess about food.  Finally I’m going to do something about it.  I’m going to get help from a professional because I can’t live my life like this anymore.  I need to change.  I want to be healthy in mind as well as body.