This is my story of how I arrived here today. Some of you have already heard it. Feel free to add your own.

I use to post everywhere on this site, but I get really frustrated sometimes by the lack of action there is for some. I want to help but you can't lose weight for someone else. Besides coming to terms with my ED is somewhat embarassing. And I guess that is probably a good story to tell. First short time line to catch you up, I came to NE with my ex-husband in 1988, before this I was a military brat and a wanderer. Some how NE man continue to appeal to me and keep me here

My struggle with food and weightloss go as far back as I remember. Not really a fat child, in comparrison to both my petite sisters I felt huge. So I acted out in as many ways possible from starving to drug use to getting married. This resulted in my second marriage at 15, closet bullemia, and dropping out of HS after my freshman year. By 17 I had given a child up for adoption, was twice divorced, and completely crazy when it came to food. And then I met my husband Tod.

His family was a real family. I was loved and accepted just as I was. While I was pregnant with my son my MIL helped me get my GED and I went to college and got an AS in Pre-Physician Asst and a BS in Chemistry. I also bloomed to 210 lbs and Dr. Dean Ornish and I spent a year busting my butt down to 123 lbs. My DH acted out by gambling and sleeping with other women. Our finances in ruin, our marriage almost completely destroyed, back into drug use up to my ears, and almost flunking out of college I slowly ebbed up to 200 lbs. I somehow managed to graduate and then I started working at a pharmaceutical company. I became a workaholic , not looking at myself at all, and in complete denial I met my highest weight ever of 265 lbs.

Then I got hired by my current company. It was physical and there were many bets that I wouldn't make it. Physical activity alone dropped me to 230 lbs. Busting my butt I found 175 lbs again and then my grandfather died. The minor background of depression that had been my life exploded. Drug use, lying in bed feeling desperate and regretful, losing my house, I was dying and 230 lbs. was once again in my future.

After losing the house I woke up one day and could not face another day of drug abuse. I looked in the mirror. I had holes in my face, scars on my body, I was cutting myself to feel. I cut off all the druggies in my life, and finally got sober. I got a promotion at work, and I stabilized at 221 lbs. Then I found this wonderful place.

The motivation alone got me down to 200 and then my ED started to show. I was in denial, and began the cycle of bingeing and purging. I found BFL and was able to get down to 185, but I also found a new way to beat myself up and purge--the gym. All or nothing person I am, a free week turned into free months and last summer I met 230 lbs. again. I was a Monday morning motivator.

Someone I work with who's mother has an ED pointed out to me that I seemed obsessive with food, and pointed me towards the Kay Sheppard book, "From the First Bite". I ordered the book upon the suggestion, anything to lose weight. In the interim and desperate I turned to BFL again. But I couldn't get the food together, so I excercised more and more. October 21,2003 God said enough. I fell at work over a 3/4 inch hose and broke my elbow. My Dr. said ALL WEIGHTLIFTING was out for 6-8 weeks. And all the sudden Kay's book showed up. It mentioned OA and I went for 6 days straight bingeing before and after every meeting, and knowing its where I belonged.

An Atkins food plan, 2 sponsors, physical therapy, and acknowledgement that I couldn't do this myself, and I would have to let God in or stay desperate and I was abstinent for 2 months. I lost it 2 days after Christmas. I was letting the food plan be the God of my life. I started slowly keeping Atkins eating and slowly introducing good carbs, my abstinence became simple, "No bingeing". So I wouldn't binge, but if I ate any food that made me feel guilty I was back to purging. I found 180 lbs again and lived 4 months free of bingeing.

Fights with my husband over my program and I wanted to give up. I turned my back on God and my program and ate and purged. After the purging was kicking my booty I got a therapist. Now I put things in perspective instead of all or nothing I have decided with this kind of history, that things could be worse.

God is the answer to my sanity, He loves me and I am a beautiful daughter of God. I will have growth out of all of this. It has been 5 days since I purged and I have taken a recommitment step to my program. This I take one day at a time, because the truth is that is all we have. Our past is the cashed check, and the future is an IOU.

The weight seems less important to me than ever, but I am hanging out again in the 180's. I still have 2 sponsors and by God's grace and love will continue on this journey to whatever my goal weight is suppose to be.

I have found Yoga and meditation to be very helpful on this journey and setting myself up for success. My identified talents are communication, connectedness, input, winning others over, and intellection. From this moment I want to make this story about someone who moves forward with love, caring, compassion, and living in God's will for me.

Chris

Chris, big hugs to you! What a brave post!

I will share my story when I get back from Kansas City on Sunday - I promise! (We have adoption in common - something I never knew!)

I promised Chris I would share, too. It's tough admitting all your foibles, isn't it?

I am meditating and praying about certain things, but in the meantime, I can share this part of my story: I, too, grew up not fat, but thinking (and being told) I was. I also have a good deal of abandonment issues, which is a big reason I think I turned to food. I never knew my biological father. My mom met him when she was 19, and she will admit that the only thing they had in common was sex. In hindsight, she thinks he might even have been married. He left for Vietnam before I was born. My mom wrote to him, told him she was pregnant, and sent him a picture of me after I was born. She never heard from him again. I know he made it back, because his name's not on the Wall. When I was two and a half, my mom married my stepdad. They married in October and my sister was born in April - you do the math. From the beginning, my stepdad made me feel hinky, and I don't think he much gave a **** about me, either. My mom wanted him to adopt me, but he never went through with it. He never learned to spell my name correctly. He was an angry hitter and I was terrified of him. When I was 11, he started to touch me inappropriately. In hindsight, the signs were all there - I had to be forced to bathe, wouldn't brush my teeth or my hair, drew inward - but I guess because I didn't say anything verbally, no one caught on. I finally stood up to him one day. A week or so later, he left my mom in the middle of the night (she worked nights). I knew then that I wasn't the cause - he'd been carrying on affairs for years - and I was frankly glad he was gone. My mom and my sister, though, were absolutely devastated. My mom became a functional alcoholic for a while, and I became her confidant. She would cry. I was 11. I didn't know how to help. My sister would cry. She missed her daddy. I hated his slimy guts, but knew I couldn't tell her that.

Fast forward a year. I had hit puberty full on and was a curvaceous young woman - not fat, curvaceous. Meanwhile, my sister had become "the pretty one" and I had become "the smart one." My mother once told me (I **** you not), "You might grow up to be pretty, but you will never be beautiful." And then my mom met another slimy man. He was only six years my senior and he moved in when I was in 8th grade. My mom decided her children were no longer important. She was never there anymore. I remember distinctly asking her for a ride somewhere when I was 13 and she virtually exploded with rage. "Dammit!" she said. "I'm tired of being a mom! It's MY turn!" Ouch. On top of that, the relationship between her boyfriend and I was nothing less than antagonistic. I remember when I was still in junior high, he slammed my head against the garage door frame and gave me a bloody nose. When I was in 9th grade, he started peeking at me while I slept. I didn't tell. I didn't think anyone would believe me. I thought I would be accused of making it up because I didn't like him.

Meanwhile, I'm feeling progressively more and more empty inside. I thought a boyfriend would fix it. I didn't have one, so I turned to food. My first real diet was in 8th grade: a peanut butter sandwich with no jelly and lots and lots of TAb. That was all I allowed myself to eat each day. Every once in a while, I'd treat myself with an apple. I lost about 30 pounds in six weeks. I was 5'4" and weighed about 103 lbs. I must have looked absolutely anorexic, but everyone told me how fabulous I looked. Enter the yo-yo dieting, with periods of anorexia. (No bulimia for me - I tried it once and I decided I hate to barf.)

Fast forward to the middle of 10th grade. I find my first serious boyfriend. He's a mess. He mother is a horrible, controlling monster and his dad is a Casper Milquetoast. We share a crappy home life in common. That summer, he knocks me up. I spend my junior year of high school pregnant and denying it vehemently. Meanwhile, boyfriend is spiraling into drugs and alcohol. His mother kicks him out, and he lives in front of my house in his car. He can't hold a job for ten seconds. That May, I give birth to a baby boy. Boyfriend has some delusion that we can be a happy family, but in the meantime, he's become abusive and possessive, threatening to commit suicide when I want to go on a school trip without him. I put my foot down and made him sign the adoption papers. Relinquishing that child was the hardest thing I have ever done, but it was the only thing I could have done. (An aside: I found him last year. His name is Greg. He turned 20 in May. He's a junior in college. I have spoken with his parents on the phone. They seem like wonderful, caring people. They gave him a great deal of opportunities he never would have had with a 16 year old mom. He's not ready to meet me yet. Hopefully, someday he will be.)

That summer, a wonderful angel named Scott came into my life. He was the catalyst that led to me finally breaking up with my boyfriend. (No, I didn't date him. He was gay.) Boyfriend stalked me. He eventually stopped - don't know why. Glad he did. Haven't seen him since.

But, at home, it was still shitty. I fought with my mom every single day - screaming, horrible, ugly, name-calling, door-slamming fights. I begged her to go to counseling with me, and she told me that I was just a spoiled brat and that *I* was the problem, not her, and she wasn't going to have some egghead tell her what a horrible mother she was. Her boyfriend beat the holy **** out of me one day. I called the cops. Mom told me to call them back because it would make boyfriend even madder if he had to go to jail. I did. The dispatcher asked me if I was sure. I said yes. No one came. Wish they had.

My sister finally spoke up and told my mom that Boyfriend had been touching her. Mom reacted the way I thought she would - she got angry and accused my sister of making it up because she didn't like him. I didn't say anything. I don't know why. I owe my sister an apology. My sister told her again a few days later and that time - for some reason - mom finally believed her. She kicked boyfriend out of the house, BUT CONTINUED TO DATE HIM!!!!!

Meanwhile, I'm making half-hearted suicide attempts....

more later.

Jenelle-
Only share as much as you feel you should. But OMG I love you. Your beautiful. And as you said to me lat night, we have survived what would kill others. In the sexual abuse your not alone, I am just not ready to dredge all that crap up. God your brave. (((((((Big HUG)))))))))))
Love,
Chris

continuing the story...

but it's kind of comical in a dark way because no one catches on. On the outside, I'm pretending to be put together, but I'm afraid to succeed. I score a 780 (out of 800) on the verbal section of my SAT, but I pass senior English only because I wrote the dedication for the yearbook and it was really really good and it also happened to be about my English teacher. (Mr. DeLong - a wonderful man, God rest his soul. He died of cancer three years later.) I want to go to college, but the paperwork frightens me and my mom won't help. ("If you really want it," she says, "you'll do it yourself." But it's not a matter of wanting, it's a matter of not understanding where in the **** I'm supposed to start!) I decided to join the military reserves under the guise of getting money for college, but what I really wanted was to get the **** out from under my mom's roof.

I graduated high school on my 18th birthday and left for boot camp in Florida two weeks later. It was very, very hard, but I came out of there with a strong sense of accomplishment and a kick-*** body. I was there for a school for a month after I graduated boot camp, and woo-eeee did I sow some wild oats! At the time, the drinking age in Florida was 18 if you had a green military ID. Also, I was blessed (or cursed, maybe) with the fact that (a) I looked fabulous and (b) no one knew anything about me or my history. Unfortunately, I was still looking for that love, and I didn't understand there was a difference between love and sex (THAT one took me a looooong time to figure out!). I had lots of "boyfriends."

Then I go back home. I'd tasted independence and it was fine. In my mom's eyes, I was still a child. We still fought constantly. I started going to the local junior college at her insistence - for about three weeks. I hated it, but couldn't tell her, so I just kept on pretending I was going. I had more "boyfriends." I got in a huge fight over curfew (I was 18 and had NEVER had a curfew before!) and packed my bags. "If you walk out that door, don't come back," my mom said while my sister screamed at her to stop. I walked out - back to my angel Scott. His mom let me stay there for a few days and encouraged me to be the bigger person and call my mom. I did. I went back until that summer, when I went to San Diego on two weeks active duty. I had a "boyfriend" or two, and then I met the man who would be my husband.

boom. just like that. I knew the minute I met him that I would marry him. When I flew home, I cried so hard on the airplane that the stewardess even got misty-eyed. A week later, armed with nothing but a map, hubby-to-be showed up on my doorstep. I left with him that night.

I also left my sister. I don't know her story and I can't presume to be in her head, but I know our home affected her in some ways, too. She turned to drugs and alcohol for a few years, but thank God got her wake-up call and left it all behind. I know that I couldn't have helped her by staying because I was such a mess myself. I hope she understands. I think she does.

Meanwhile, my life hasn't been perfect. There have been problems. There's been loneliness. A few years ago, I almost left hubby because he wouldn't stop looking at Internet porn. (Really, what hurt worst was the he promised he'd stop, said he'd stopped, but I caught him time and time again.) It sent me into an anorexic spiral for a while. I have a hard time believing myself to be beautiful, but there's a lot of evidence that I am. When I'm not beating myself up by abusing food, I must have some sort of glow because I get hit on a lot. That's scary too, though. I have a lot to lose and can devastate a lot of people if I don't pay close attention to the difference between love and needing to feel "loved."

I am a child of God. And I am beautiful.

the end

wait. a p.s. - Scott died a few months ago after a short illness. My sister called me and said she'd seen the obituary in the local paper. I wrote a letter to his mom telling him how he'd affected my life and how blessed I was by him. I hope to meet him in heaven some day and tell him myself.

wow, you guys how touching, or rather how similar we are. I know I've never posted in this forum but only because I hate to admit to anyone, even myself that I ever had any sort of problems. I'll try the short version hope I don't bore you...

I was born in Michigan when my mom and dad were 17 he eventually left for reasons unknown but I've heard conflicting stories. I've never met him but would love to someday. My mom then married my younger sisters dad and he was absolutely horrible to me and my mom, frequent beatings were a staple in that house, not being fed, being locked in a room for days on end with no water or food, I once drank from a toilet because I was soo thirsty. Mind you none of this was my moms fault, she worked 3 jobs to take care of us, she made all of our clothes by hand so we always looked nice, it was that evil man who didn't give a ****! He is the only person that I wish death on.
Anyway, after a huge fight with him one night he held a knife to my moms throat which I saw happen and then held us hostage, we snuck out in the middle of the night with just what we could fit in a few backpacks. Started over with nothing, moved to Montana, mom married another jerk, beatings again, same ol same ol....mom claims she never knew....I wonder sometimes

HighSchool came, I was 118 lbs all through high school 118 lbs at 5'4" not too shabby, but I always thought I was fat, I used ipecac to make myself sick and would binge and purge daily. I had a diary even that I had a code for how much I ate and then how much I threw back up. I didn't have a great relationship with my mother during this time, she always thought I was doing stuff that I wasn't in fact doing. Well all the accusations drove me to do the stuff she thgouth I was doing all along. I started small, smoking cigs, then to pot, tried some crank, drank lightly.

Well I started to get along with my mom so I moved back with her for a few months then I became a nanny and moved to the east coast. It was great and I was actually living healthy. Then I met a guy, who was a weight freak!! I dated him for 2 years. He brought my ED back to the surface, he didn't ever want me eating anything with fat in it or high calorie etc ...you get the picture, once he even told me that I could put the food in my mouth and chew it "just don't swallow it, spit it in the garbage" Well thats when I started cutting, My arms are now covered in scars, some more visable than others, but all there...So I was cutting, and binging and purging it was an endless cycle. I got out of that relationship and lived clean for a bit well besides drinking and meaninless sex....I met another man, who got me hooked on crack cocaine, I can't even remember the first time I did it....anyway, the drugs were great, only in the fact that they made me sick to my stomach and high, so I didn't have to worry about throwing my food up as the drugs would make me do it, my cutting got worse and worse. Finally one night I was so high that I knew if i took one more hit I was going to die so I slept it off for 3 days, woke up and did some more....I called my mom and told her I needed to come home, so she brought me home, well people continued to send me coke in the mail so I was still getting f'd up and not doing what I had moved back home to do. I had 10 oz sent to me in a Jiffy muffin mix box and proceeded to do the lot of it with a guy I was sleeping with, well it took us about a day to do it, and in a drug induced night of meaningless sex, I got pregnant with my first daughter, I was clean thankfully up til I found out I was pregnant, well let me tell you about this little girl....She saved my life!! I would be dead now if it hadn't been for god giving me this blessing of a child, she was truely my life saver!! I got clean with no problems at all, I've completely stopped doing drugs, drinking, and cutting. Her father of course wanted no part of her which is fine by me. I met the man who is my husband when I was 5 months pregnant with dd #1 we got married a week after my dd turned one, we just had our second child in october amid a few medical scares which again god brought me through and made me stronger. We discovered I have a thyroid disorder which caused me to gain over 100 lbs in 2 years!! I'm now on hormone replacement, and take a weight loss med to help. I'm trying to do this the right way now, although I will admit, that there are days....but its becoming less and less. I thank god everyday for my angels and my dh. On a side note, my hubby does know of my past drug use but to this day he doesn't know of my B&P or my cutting, he's seen the scars either he knows and doesn't want to make me feel bad or he knows and he's not sure he wants to know the **** I went through at that time in my life.

Ok thats my story, you get the gist of it, thanks for letting me share, I needed to get that out of me.

Michelle - hugs to you for being brave! The one time I tried purging, I used ipecac, too. I found out later that you can actually die if you take too much of it!

I am blessed to know such wonderful, amazing women.



Chris

Thanks for letting me share with you guys!!! I really needed to come to terms with this stuff and finally get it out

Michelle

Hello out there,

As a suggestion by my therapist, I want to recall my life within the past 2yrs. I'm recovering from a severe eating disorder that almost defeated me, and today, I'm still not aware of what really happened. I've never been overweight, just average I guess, until my junior yr. in college when I met a guy I worked with.. A relationship started and I was in love, a first for myself. It wasn't a few months afterward when i noticed that my clothes felt looser and people began to compliment me on my new "weight loss". I guess with classes, work, life, my relationship, I just didn't eat as much. With the compliments and new self awareness, I begin to actually watch what I ate, and for the next two years, it spiraled into a deadly trap. I normally wore a size 12, and by this time of last year, i was wearing a size 12 in little girls. Over 80pds were gone, I weighed 77pds on a 5'6 frame. Statiscally I should be dead, and I know it was the good Lord that kept me living. I was in Louisville after getting my degree, working as a correctional officer at a state prison. It still blows my mind in how I actually worked all day long, supervising all those inmates, and I couldn't even walk up stairs or bend down b/c I had no muscle at all. I remember some times when I woke up, my body would be like a fish.. I was nothing but dry skin all over b/c I had cut my consumption of diet rite to just a half a can a day. I ate just once, consisting of a few babbt carrots, a small handful of broccoli and cauliflower, and sometimes I added some pretzles. At lunch time at work, I ate a half of a cracker, just to let myself enjoy "lunch". I knew I was skinny and dying, but I couldn't find that comfort zone in which i felt to start eating again. Until that day, August 29th 2003, I finally went back home to my doctor and thank god for her. Out of all the hundreds of people, she made sense to me. I was put on Lexapro, and it wasn't until October that I started to eat. It was great, but yet, I hated it b/c I was losing that body I worked so hard for.. But I was eating for my sister. She died when I was 12 with an eating disorder also, and I couldn't let this disorder defeat me also. Oddly enough, we both dated the same brothers who were in our lives when our eating disorder started. I still don't know what to think about that. Now it's today, I'm healthy, but still continue to fight it everyday. I've accepted i'm going to live with this all my life and I'll always have my safe foods, and do not eat foods. I'm a different person, both physically and mentally. Maybe one day, I'll accept myself for who I am. I believe it was destiny that brought me through that vicious cycle of my life, and a part of me believes had to beat this disease because my sister couldn't.
That's my story in a nutshell.. It's very much more detailed with alot more odd twists, but I think what I wrote is odd enough LOL.
Hope all is well in your guys part of the world,
Peace,
Vanessa

Welcome Vanessa,
Thank you for sharing. Thank you for your hope. God has big plans for you, he has sent people to keep you here. Welcome.


Chris

VAnessa welcome!! Thanks so much for sharing! You are a strong woman to come through that

Vanessa - I'm so glad you are still here to share your story with us! Keep coming back.

People often say that they use food as a substitute for love. It is usually a subconscious thing. The scent of a turkey roasting in the oven might bring to mind grandma's house on Thanksgiving. You always serve yourself with the big spatula when you encounter a lasagna "just like mom used to make." Ice cream and doughnuts are just happy; they bring to mind special Sundays at the park. And the extras! Only getting a dollop of whipped cream on top of your pie biannually definitely amplifies its appeal.

The physical sensations certainly add to the feeling of love. First you encounter the mouth-feel. Marshmallows and mashed potatoes: it feels good even to say them! At this very moment food chemists are working feverishly in their kitchen-laboratories to calculate exactly how hydrogenated a product must be to melt lovingly in your mouth, yet have stability you can depend upon.

And what is a love affair without feeling satisfaction? A nice happy full tummy makes you feel warm and secure and content.

When these elements are combined with a proper diet, there is nothing wrong with such a love affair with food. In fact tasting more, savoring your food, reveling in your love for it, will not cause you to be a glutton. It will encourage an appreciation for every aspect of your food, so that you slow down and enjoy.

Those are all very normal associations to have with food.

I think that my food associations took a wrong turn somewhere in my childhood. You see, my mother actually taught me that food means love. I don't mean that figuratively. There are probably a lot of people who feel that all mothers "teach" their children that cooking comes from the heart and that food is made with love. My mother literally said to me many, many times that food means love. Of all the lessons that she tried to pound into my hard little head, this was one that she was most unrelenting in teaching.

Every time that I did not want to eat any part of my dinner, she would tell me that it was because I did not love her, and I was rejecting her love.

As most teenagers do, I did go through a phase where I was rejecting her love. I will not blame my mother completely for my myriad eating disorders; I certainly had the body image issues that all high school girls have. To tell the truth, I still have the body image issues that many women have. But I believe that while I was a teenager, my conscious choice not to eat was also a not-so-subconscious rejection of my mother’s love.

One fall day when I was a teenager, I was sitting at the dining room table moving my mother’s love around on my plate and making interesting designs using my fork and finger. She told me for at least the thousandth time that I was doing that because I did not love her and I was rejecting her love. I finally told her that she was right. I was not going to eat it because I did not love her and I didn’t want her love. Her reply was that I could not stop her from loving me. To prove it, she sat down on top of me and began cramming the contents of my combination platter into my face. When I clamped my mouth shut so that the love wasn’t allowed in the conventional way, she just shoved it into my nose and ears; the mouth wasn’t available, so the other head openings would have to do.

Hm. She forced her love on me ... couldn’t that be considered rape?

These sorts of lessons stick with a kid. Later in life, when I was feeling unloved, I would eat. I eat to the point that I am satisfied. And I will think I need more, because even though I have enough right now, my love stores are usually running close to empty. So I eat more. I eat to the point that I feel pain. And I think I need more, because the love might help to heal it. And I eat more. I eat to the point that I am nauseous and in incredible pain. And I eat more, because I probably deserve to feel that way since I am unworthy of love. I eat an insane amount. I eat in one sitting more than I would normally eat in a week. Then I feel guilty and gluttonous. The love hurts so bad. I just took it in such excess and was so undeserving of it. So I let it go.

I know that I have a problem in my head with my weight. But that plays such a small part in my binges. I am really thinking of the food as love when I do this. Love is the foremost thought in my mind.

Puberty was a difficult time. Anorexia was being glamorized – I mean "castigated" - by the media in full force during the early nineties, and it was also all the rage for our health class at school. This is how I learned that I could reverse the effects of puberty if I would dedicate myself a little more to not eating. I wanted nothing to do with having a period, and I was also hoping that I could rid myself of the roundness in my hips and bust in order to cause my attacker to become disinterested.

Alas, my insatiable hunger for consumable love combined with Scandinavian genetics would not allow me to revert to a boyish figure. I spent more and more time farther and farther away from home in order to avoid my molester and my mother as well. Many times I would ride my bike to get a backpack full of food to find myself at a secluded spot by the river in order to binge and purge. I would watch the eddies of vomit as they drifted down stream; not even repulsed by it, but thinking rather coldly of my actions as something that must be done.

During a moment of weakness at a church retreat I told a lady from our church that I was bulimic. She looked at me without veiling her incredulity and snorted a laugh without bothering to stifle it and declared, "you are much too fat to have an eating disorder."

It was then that I realized what a horrible failure I was. I was puking out nearly everything I put into my mouth, and yet I was still within the normal weight range. On top of that, here I was telling the church lady I was bulimic – obviously just to get attention.

Years passed, and dental bills soared as regurgitated stomach acid ate away at my tooth enamel – but I continued to be too fat for an eating disorder, so I didn’t have to worry about anyone questioning it. I just kept staying farther and farther from home more and more often.

Eventually I married an abusive man. He reawakened in me my hatred for my own body. Not only was it ugly, but the fact that it was a woman's body allowed it to have all manner of atrocities performed upon it. I hated myself and my body and I hated being a woman; I was sure that I was completely undeserving of love from anyone.

Financially lean times combined with the knowledge that I was unlovable and the desire to stop being a woman were the fuel for my "success" with anorexia. I would go nine or ten months without having a period and would delight at this small control I had over my own person. My husband was in charge of where my body would be at every minute of every day – but at least I could be in charge of its functions.

My husband’s job moved us across the country and into an apartment that was next to a wonderful woman who soon became my best friend. She enabled me to break free from that marriage. It was quite a struggle that took years. I do not wish to revisit any part of it, but I am glad to say that I no longer have contact with him whatsoever and thank God we never produced any offspring together.

Now here I am, almost a decade later. I am married to a wonderful man. I did it right this time. We were best friends for years before we got married.

I am beginning to heal. It has only been five months since I realized and accepted the fact that yes, I really, really do indeed have an eating disorder – regardless of the fact that I seem to be about normal weight (or "too fat"). I have not purged at all since this epiphany. I don’t know that I will never do it again – but so far so good.

I have been lurking here for some time, reading your posts. The support and love you give to one another is fabulous. I really do want to be a part of your group, and not just a lurker anymore.