Inside my Bell Jar...

by A.M.
(Indiana)

It was kind of inexplicable how it started. I'm tending toward believing there's a genetic component to the causes of eating disorders because it was just always there...my whole life.

I started thinking and expressing that I was fat when I was like 5 years old. I started cutting around this time, too. I was a quiet kid...kind of an outcast who didn't have many friends; the ones I did have tended to just be there to copy my homework and snicker at me behind my back.

By 12 I was working out and restricting. Going into 8th grade at 13 I decided I was going to fit in no matter what. I started dressing better and...LOL it was the mid 90's...I got that ugly old "Rachel" haircut.

That was when the anorexia symptoms began. I started going days without eating. Literally sometimes it was as long as a week without food. And you know what? People liked me all of a sudden.

I got attention. Popular kids talked to me in the halls at school...all because I looked like effing Kate Moss.

I got down to about 80lbs before my parents put me into eating disorder treatment. I was so young I had to see my pediatrician first to get referred to a therapist. I saw her twice a week and a dietitian twice a week...the whole deal....

By the time summer came around, I was 14, I'd gained 20 pounds and I didn't have to go to treatment anymore...so they said.

My whole freshman year of high school I secretly popped laxatives and diet pills. This was when you could still get phen phen, and I definitely took that shit. And now, as a result, I have a heart arrhythmia.

Suddenly...after awhile...I was ok. I just was ok one day and I was ok until I graduated high school.

Then I was ok until I found myself overweight at age 22. I was with this awful guy who told me I was fat and that I didn't dress right. I flipped out completely. The fact was that I really was overweight and my blood pressure was high. I really should have lost weight.


But I went nuts, the bulimia signs set in, and I started purging for the first time. I was working at a hotel then...2nd shift when the place was empty. Hotel workers get free pizza for suggesting different pizzerias to guests. I'd order all the free pizzas and binge and purge until my knuckles and my throat bled.

Then the drinking started. I realized I wasn't losing weight very quickly, so I quit eating and started taking massive amounts of caffeine pills and drinking at the bar until last call. When I started dating the bartender, sometimes I'd stay until 5am. Chairs would be up on the tables and the lights dimmed, doors locked, and I'd still be sitting at the rail, getting hammered.

And I'd go for days without eating...just drinking and purging. I was confused all the time. My memory was completely devastated. I don't know how I graduated college, but somehow I did. I lost over 50 pounds that way. And the laxatives...lord...some days I took entire boxes of laxatives if I had eaten.

I started working in retail and loooved it because I could try on all the size 0's I wanted, all day long. I worked in an upscale department store and part of my job was getting clients to personal shop for...it was part of my job to know how clothes fit. All the mirrors everywhere, all the pretty clothes...I had to stay skinny...I didn't have any reason to get better, even though my stomach hurt all the time, and my voice was hoarse from puking...I was grinding my teeth at night and they were breaking.

I stayed skinny until I got pregnant with my first child. I gained too much weight with him...surprise...and that's where I am today...holding on for dear life as I lose the baby weight. I was doing well the first several months after he was born...I was so happy. Now I feel isolated and fat, and I'm finding myself struggling again...a chronic case at least.

I think I will struggle the rest of my life.