Author: VALPAL

It’s been a while since I’ve posted.  My Story is hard to tell.  I’ve always wished this wasn’t my story, but I hear God’s voice calling me to tell it.

By the time I was 17 I was miserable and full of self hatred.  I said in a previous post that I had so much self hatred that I could have fell prey to finding love in all the wrong places.  It was God’s providence that this is when I met the guy that would be my future husband.  A very good guy.

The thing is, he had no idea how damaged I was. He saw me the way I presented myself. I was good at hiding the bad.

Long story short, we married when I was only 18 (not something I recommend). He was a good man and would have sent me to college but I chose to stay employed at a job.

I wish that the love of a good man could have cured me, but that is not how it went down.

I continued with bulimia, hiding it well, even from him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love my parents and I have a good relationship with them, so telling this part of my story is hard to do.  No parent wants to find out what they did wrong with their child.  I know this, because I am a parent, and I know that I did not do it all right.  I’ve made mistakes that I know about and I made mistakes that I probably don’t know about.

I had one passion as a teenager.  I was an excellent student who was always on the honor roll.  I made decisions on class choices based on the fact that I was going to college. I had a goal.

Let me say this to any parent reading this blog.  The number one way to get a child to steer clear of a lot of bad choices, is to help them find goals, (hobbies, athletics, talents, etc.) that they can direct their ambitions toward.  Something or somethings that make them feel good about themselves.  My goal was college and a degree.  But the summer between my junior and senior year (a night I remember vividly), I was told by my parents that I was NOT going to college.  As they said, “It was a waste of time and money”  As a girl, they felt that I would get married, and college was not a good idea.  I wouldn’t need it.

Did I say I remember it vividly?  I was devastated! The news was delivered at a family dinner table, and although I pleaded my case, they wouldn’t here of it.  All I could think about that night was how I was going to find a way to go without their help.  I know now that I could have found a way, but my teenage self couldn’t see it, and finally relinquished the hope of ever going to college after I graduated from high school.

I tell this part of my story, because their was a period of time between my anexoria and bulimia.  Before this devastating news, I was in that in between state.  Who knows, if I could have been able to hold on to my dream, would the pendelum have swung to bulimia.  When my goals were taken from me I spiraled downward, in many ways.  I didn’t get straight A’s anymore because it didn’t matter.  I stayed on the honor roll and that kept my parents happy, but I started drinking, and partying, and hanging out with kids who did that too. AND the eating disorder kicked into high gear.

I also could not wait to get out of my house.  I knew that when I graduated I was gone.  I not only cut off my parents from any part of my life, I also cut off my two siblings.  I felt alot of self hatred, condemnation from God, and drinking helped me numb those feelings, and it was a way to fit in and not be so shy with my peers.

To this day I know that God protected me during that time, even though I didn’t deserve it. Not only when I was drinking, but the opposite sex started paying attention to me.  And because of my self hatred and need for love, I could have gone down the path of sleeping around. Thank God I didn’t.

 

My secret life with Bulimia, was just that, secret.  I could now carry on with life on the outside looking quite normal.  I maintained a healthy weight, was socially active, and did well in school.  My parents were elated.  Elated and Oblivious!

Keeping it secret was pretty much a full time job because as my disorder progressed, I could have episodes of it once, twice, or sometimes three times a day.  I had to binge in secret and I had to purge in secret.

The next part of the story is the hardest to tell (at least one of the hardest).

I started stealing money from my parents to buy some of the food I ate. They always had cash handy because they owned their own business and took money from the till home.  Also, I had to find places to purge. Sometimes I went out into the woods next to our house, sometimes I drove to woods, but if I could not get out of the house, I had to find ways to do it in my home without anyone knowing.  Many times I did it in the shower while the water was running.  Many times I purged in my room in a container.  This is how my parents finally found out what I was doing.  They found that container before I could flush the contents.

Once again, bulimia is not a known term in 1977.  My parents can not figure me out.  First they think that maybe I’m having trouble with alcohol and got sick.  But self-induced vomiting? They had never heard of such a thing.  Their response? Anger.

This was how my teenage bulimia looked like. Unfortunatly, it did not end there.

 

There is so much inner turmoil inside me about telling the rest of my story. Even now, after making the commitment to start and pay for this blog, I can almost talk myself out of it.

The only way to tell this story is to tell it with brutal honesty. I hope I have the guts.

My little reprieve from the symptoms of eating disorders did not last long. The pendulum swung the other way. Even now I can’t pinpoint the exact reason. I would love to have all the answers, but I don’t. I just know that this second wave totally took me down. That second wave was Bulimia.

Bulimia: Also called bulimia nervosa. An eating disorder characterized by episodes of secretive excessive eating (binge-eating) followed by inappropriate methods of weight control, such as self-induced vomiting (purging), abuse of laxatives and diuretics, or excessive exercise.

Yep, that’s the definition. Yep, that’s my secret. And this dirty little secret, unlike anorexia, will plague me for decades.

When I tell this part of my story, it’s probably the easiest for me to tell.  The first year and a half of my eating disorders, I was anorexic.  But as my sixteenth birthday approached, I started doing things socially outside of my family.  I had good friends at the time and I began to want to get better.  Up to that point I had been a straight A student who spent all her time studying for the perfect grades (probably another reason for my disorders).  Now I wanted to be normal.  I slowly started eating.

Through my junior year in high school, I WAS very normal.  I started looking healthy again.   Socially, boys were starting to notice me.  My parents were elated.  They thought that whatever that was, it was over.  No….It wasn’t over.  None of the things that caused this disorder had ever really been addressed.  I didn’t receive the help I so needed.  It was just dormant for a brief time.  The real storm was about to happen.

I grew up in my elementary school years with three other little friends. And when I say little, I mean small in size, compared to me. I look back at my childhood pictures and I am far from over weight, but in comparison to my three friends, I was much larger. Not only was I larger, one of them would constantly point it out. She continually told me that I was fat and I believed her.
I also was a very compliant child. I was obedient with my parents, always had good behavior at school, and never caused trouble for anyone. I was a pleaser and was easily manipulated. All of these traits are common in someone that develops eating disorders.
Anorexia is very much a disorder of control. People often think it’s all about food and weight. It really isn’t. I will sometime in a future blog address this. I think parents of anorexics think that it is all about weight. Actually, it’s having control of your body that feeds the disorder. When other things in our lives are out of control, it’s the one thing we can have control over. It’s about control.
The stressors in my life that caused the perfect storm, and started the spiral into my disorder, came to a head when I was 14 years old. It was 1974. That’s a long time ago. Long before the words, anorexia, bulimia, or eating disorders were even known terms.
I pretty much got up one day and decided that I was not going to eat. I would get up before my family and instead of eating my regular bowl of cereal, I would dampen the bowl with a little milk and put a few flakes to make it look like I had eaten. I wouldn’t eat anything but an apple for lunch at school, and I would pick at my dinner. My parents didn’t notice anything different until the weight starting falling off. Then the fight began.
Up until then, they had a compliant child. One of their easiest to raise. No longer. I dug in my heels and refused to eat. It got bad. At 14 when your body should be growing and developing, my body was eating itself. Slowly, I started looking like a starving child from a refugee camp. Still I wouldn’t eat. And once again, it’s 1974. My parents have no idea what they are dealing with. They dealt with much anger. Probably the worst response. I needed help and I didn’t get it.

Before I start my story I want to share one Bible verse. This verse was a key to my recovery. It is the resonating theme of my story and I want to share it first. Later you will see how it helped me.
Phillipians 2:13
“For it is God who works in you, to will and to act according to His good purpose.”
My Story Begins……..
I come from a middle class, Christian family, raised in a small town in Washington State. My childhood was probably fairly normal, but every family has some dis-function, and we did too.
One of the things that had such a negative effect on me as a child, was the lack of interaction with my parents. I realize now that my mother was task oriented, and not being raised with physical or verbal affection herself, did not know how to show that to others.
I, on the other hand, was a child who very much needed verbal and physical love. There were no hugs or “I love you” in my childhood. Because I did not get that, I became shy, timid, and insecure. I was the oldest child, and from very early on, instinctively knew that I had to take care of myself. I felt alone and fearful of just about everything. When I awoke in the middle of the night in fear from a nightmare I was told to go back to bed. One time at the age of 6, I decided to put the wall clock in our kitchen ahead so that, in my mind, daylight would come sooner. Needless to say when my mother saw it the next day, I did not confess.

I had imaginary playmates all my childhood, well into my pre-teens. They were the ones that loved and adored me. To them I was special.
I attended a Christian school and learned about God at a very early age. Although I did believe in God, it wasn’t until years later that He became real to me. In school it was more of a history lesson and not a heart lesson.

In a small town everyone one knows you. In our little Dutch town, that was taken to an extreme.  Pride ruled. Pride of possessions and pride of what others thought of you. Appearance was key. You needed to look good, do good, and be successful. It was an environment that was a breeding ground for someone to develop eating disorders. I am sure to this day that the percentage of people suffering from them is very high in my home town.

Normally you don’t want anyone to know your dirty laundry, but in a small town, that fear is much greater. This makes it all the harder to get help. Everyone is putting their game face on. All the skeletons are in their closets. If your skeleton should get out, you are the talk of the town.