Strength Is The Key, Struggling to overcome bulimia, My weight and bulimia

Strength Is Key

So basically, I'm a seventeen year old girl. Who in the past year, has endured some pretty tough scenarios. I've lost a mom to alcohol, she's now in rehab until god knows when. Along with losing her, my family has fallen apart and I've been forced into living with my grandparents, who are good people don't get me wrong. But they are perfectionists.

I'm never good enough, when I'm used to being told I'm beautiful no matter what. My mother used to take my art work and my pictures to every bar in our town and flaunt them. She was proud, and she was the most perfect mess I've ever met.

Anyway, I became a bit overweight this past summer. It was also the first summer living with my grandparents, and trying to live up to completely new and unusual expectations. My grandma came out and told me that Ii had to lose at least twenty pounds. This hit me like a ton of bricks, literally. No one in my life had ever told me I had to lose weight. So I did everything right for the rest of that summer. I ate healthy and exercised. Deprived myself of any "bad" food. And instead of twenty pounds, I lost thirty. The most triumphant feeling in the world.

Everyone complimented me and told me how good I looked. But, I wasn't content. I was proud to reach my goal. Not just for my grandma, but for my boyfriend who recently left for college. I couldn't wait for him to come home and see the new me.

When he broke up with me and wanted nothing to do with me, plans kind of changed. I dropped another seven pounds in a week from just being depressed in general. Then came the mentality that I was going to look even hotter when he came home to show him what he missed out on.

I exercised like crazy. Hardly ate. Down forty pounds. Then forty five. I literally disappeared in front of my own eyes. As I started feeling better, my appetite took over me. That's when the binges took over. I began putting weight on again, which I did not like one bit. That's when purging became a part of my everyday schedule. I could eat, and eat, and eat ridiculous amounts. And throw it all up.

My knuckles bled, my throat ached. But everything looked alright on the outside, at least to me. I can honestly say that bulimia is a mental and physical addiction, just like my mother's alcoholism. It's a comfort, a way to feel in control of something in your life when everything else is complete anarchy. What I don't know is how to get rid of it.

I've begun seeing a specialist that has helped me quite significantly. My binges are getting significantly smaller, I'm not purging as much. I still have my days. I try to take pride in the good days though. It is an every day struggle, but when I read about women who say that there is absolutely no way of overcoming this disease, it's an absolute lie. I'm on the path to recovery and there is no way in hell that I will let something like this ruin me.

To all the women out there suffering who think there is no hope: know that you are beautiful inside and out, and that if we have the self discipline to throw up absolutely everything we eat, why don't you think you have the strength to stop it? Every single individual has the strength to overcome this, no matter how long you have been suffering in silence. Please, don't let it control your life, it's a miserable way to live, if you could even call it living.

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