Recovering from bulimia was one of the biggest challenges I have faced in my life yet. Considering the fact that I spent many years of my life living this way, indulging in dangerous patterns of starving myself then binging and vomiting, getting back into a normal and healthy pattern of eating like any other normal person was one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do.

Bearing in mind the fact that I had based my entire value of self worth upon the way I looked and the size and shape of my body, I had to be prepared to completely change my perception of myself and where I stood in the world. With that it was also necessary for me to understand and stop looking for acceptance and recognition from people outside.

It was like I was fighting in a constant battle with myself. I knew I was killing myself slowly with my eating disorder and I wanted so badly to change. However, at the same time I was so afraid of letting go of the eating disorder and facing reality! I had built the belief in my mind that I would hate myself even more if I were to get fatter and I always told myself that I would far rather be dead than gain weight. So with that you can understand that it was not really letting go of the eating disorder that I was afraid of, I was the wonder of how I would feel about myself without it which scared me. The more I considered this, the more I convinced myself that this might cause an even bigger negative reaction which would start the whole ordeal over again!

I remember the earlier days when my recovery process begun, it was like a living nightmare. I had no idea what to expect from it all! Consciously, I had made the decision that I wanted to get better and end the eating disorder once and for all. Yet, something inside of me kept driving towards feeling and doing the same old things over and over again. I was literally fighting a losing battle against myself and it felt as though I had two versions of my mind living in one body. I can compare that to what you see in some cartoons where the character has the devil and the angel both popping up in his mind at the same time, both of whom are pushing him to behave in two contradicting ways!

I felt like I was a prisoner inside my own mind and I reacted very badly to this state of confusion. On my weaker days, I will admit that I was drawn into acting out my old patterns. I did starve myself all day, then I would be so hungry and desperate that I would binge and the make myself sick afterwards. I did think terrible things about myself and this felt very bad and it made me feel guilty and I began judging and punishing myself even more because I was supposed to getting better, not being bulimic all over again! It was so hard to live this way that on many occasions I really believed that the only way that this would ever stop was if I were to just stop living. This was how tiresome and desperate it all became. But in the end, I kept going and regardless of how difficult it was to keep on living through these times, I kept pushing myself to go on and well, here I am today!

One day I felt so desperate that I was on my knees on the floor crying out for help because I simply couldn?t take living through all this pain and turmoil any more. It was at this point that I suddenly realized that the more I resisted the fact that it was necessary for me to go through a slow healing process and that it was normal to feel like being ?bulimic? sometimes, the worse it would be to endure the recovery. At that point I realized that I must drop everything, all the judgment, all the guilt, all the analyzing and all the attempts to discipline myself to being ?normal? because in reality it was all of this self inflicted pressure which fuelled the eating disorder the first place!

One of the biggest characteristics you will find in a person with an eating disorder is that they have this over-powering need to be a complete perfectionist and with that they keep striving to prove something to themselves in all they do. It took me a long time to realize that it was actually myself who was the only one preventing me from letting go of bulimia and it was all because I had this need to force myself to do it perfectly which kept it going. This only made me feel more stressed and it was this stress which brought the on-shot of the bulimic feelings. It was crazy!

It is ironic really because you would think that in the case of recovering from any kind of self inflicted disorder, the person who was trying to heal themselves would need to have a full conscious determination and a perfected strong will to overcome the urges they get to keep behaving the way they do with any kind of eating disorder that exists. However, in light of it all, it learned that it was the complete opposite for me. One morning I woke up and I decided to stop pressurizing myself to recover. This was the day my true recovery begun. I decided to stop judging myself and punishing myself for occasionally feeling inclined to starve myself all day then binge and throw up afterwards, of course, this feeling would definitely occur on occasion considering I had spent years existing in a way that made this a normal daily pattern for me.

Since that day things were so much easier for me to handle. I begun to learn about my real self and I have also learnt what it really is to be able to walk through my life without pride and having enough humility to be able to accept the fact that yes, I was living dangerously with an eating disorder which completely took over my life. I did have a self destructive state of mind which manifested itself through my eating disorder. And I also learnt to accept that recovery would be a slow process which required my patience because my eating disorder and my entire way of thinking and living would not just simply switch over night. I had to know and accept that yes, some days I would feel as if despised myself and that I was not really getting better at all because I might feel like making myself sick after eating out of desperation and panic because I of the fact my body would gain weight and that my clothes might no longer fit after returning to a eating a more balanced diet.

I have learnt to slowly accept that I am far from perfect and I have tried to love myself even more just for being brave enough to admit it to myself and for being able to live day by day, taking each step as it comes without knowing what to expect and always knowing that pride and being a perfectionist has no place in my life anymore. Being able to live with this humility is what has saved me. This has allowed me to be able to drop all of the false beliefs I lived up to for so many years in terms of myself and my body.

Gradually over time recovery has become easier and the inclination to binge and vomit after eating has become lesser. The self hatred I used to feel has slowly faded away and it has been replaced by a deeper compassion and understanding towards myself. I am now able to relax and enjoy life now that I have space in my mind to appreciate the little things that used to go by unnoticed because I was so preoccupied with thinking about my weight, food and planning my next binge session! I am learning about what it feels like to really love myself and my body and I am so grateful to be alive, healthy and in almost full working order today after all the dangerous things I used to do to myself.

Nobody can ever heal you from having an eating disorder, only you can do that for yourself. You can have all the medical or psychiatric help and guidance you want, but in the end it all comes down to you and how you choose to live your life. You can choose to live and feel alive with a happy and healthy state of mind or you can choose to slowly die. You have a choice; your power lies in the choices you make. In the end it is all up to you. Never give up!

Yours in Light