bulimia, noelle kovary, and the devil

“In our yearning to be perfect, we have mistaken perfection for wholeness. We think we cannot love ourselves until we and others meet some external standard. Depression, anxiety—in fact, most neuroses and compulsions—are ultimately a defense against loving ourselves without condition. We are afraid to look at the damp, dark, ugly yet exquisite roots of being that stretch deep into our soul’s survival. We are fearful of finding that the Spirit is not there, that our Home is empty, even as our outer home is empty. Yet it is in that place of survival, where the dark mother has been abandoned, that Spirit longs to be embodied so that the whole body may become light. Ego wants to be the god of our own idealized projection; Spirit wants to be incarnated in our humanity where it can grow in wisdom through experience.”

-Marion Woodman

I remember the night I first made myself vomit.

After a football party my 10th grade year. I had broken another promise to myself around food, pizza to be exact. I had saved up all my calories that week for 1 slice of pizza - not 6. Me and all my calories never stood a chance.

I’m sure I was obsessed with the perfection of my weight (and everything else) long before I discovered the Exalted Calorie. But this is hindsight talking. 7 year old me didn’t call it obsession.

I’m just being me.

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I internalized most messages of the world around me as — “you aren’t perfect yet, but you could be if…”

I had no awareness of this.

I didn’t think I was fat until the summer before 9th grade when every girl on my cheerleading team thought they were fat. It all spiraled from there.

I’ll do anything to be skinny.

No, literally. By 10th grade, I was eating a pack of skittles a day. A literal one pack of skittles, sucked slowly one-by-one throughout the day. I could only ever do it a few days in a row; always ending with a meal (binge).

After I threw up at the football party I couldn’t stop. I loved it.

I was free from the Skittle! The Calorie was dethroned!

I in no way understood the neurology of my bulimia while I was in it. My only conscious thought then was, “become a little smaller than Claire, then stop.”

Then I got smaller than Claire, but couldn’t stop.

I had to be smaller than myself. 120, 110, 100..

Always smaller.

I remember not being able to physically fall asleep unless I knew my stomach was empty. I would wake up in the middle of the night and feel so thirsty. I would chug water, even though my rule was “small sips only,” so I would have enough to get a good purge/rush and fall back asleep.

I did this all day for a nearly a year. Binging, purging, starving, chugging, purging.

One night, I was purging dinner locked in my bathroom while the shower ran. My dad says the Holy Spirit told him to go outside. He stepped on the front porch and the voice led him to beneath my bathroom window where he saw me through the cracked blinds.

I believe my dad.

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Up until this point, I hadn’t considered I was bulimic. I knew bulimic girls on Xanga but they were smaller than me. I was “just a fat girl throwing up.”

I was no where near my breaking point with bulimia when my dad asked me to open the bathroom door.

And God bless my parents. They saved me in all the ways they knew how.

At 15, my therapist explained bulimia to me for the first time as it related to the psyche.

“Bulimics do this to feel in control.”
”Bulimics do this as a response to stress.”
”Bulimics do this to escape reality.”

No. No. And no.

I LOVE MY LIFE I JUST WANT TO BE SKINNY

This was my truth. I couldn’t see anything else. No one could make me.

Weeks passed. Therapy was not working.

I was watched like a hawk and could only purge a few times a week.

I was a bulimic who couldn’t be bulimic. Miserable.

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One Sunday, I went up to the church altar begging God to help me eat lunch later that day. I was so tired. I was so angry. I was so desperate. A girl started praying in tongues over me and a clear picture came into my mind.

I was purging over the toilet and the devil (like black cloak/black eyes devil) was holding my hair back for me in one of his hands and holding a knife in his other. The scene changed to me in a stream drowning with God on a stone above. I begged for God to save me and he threw me a rope saying, “I’ve just been waiting on you to ask.”

This was the layer of healing I could digest at the time. It felt like freedom and I was saved (again)!

For a while at least. Enter laxatives. Idk who told me about them. But I bought them because they weren’t demonic and “loving God more” was not keeping the weight off.

11th and 12th grade was just me purging out the other end. Not every day, but most days. With some weeks of no-use at all, usually after a big repentance/saving session at church.

My family fell apart the latter half of my senior year. The day after my mom kicked my dad out of the house, I went to a friends house and ate a chicken salad sandwich on the way. As soon as I got to her house, I purged for the first time in over a year.

I didn’t even think about it. It just happened.

That was the first time it resonated.

Maybe this isn’t about my weight.

But I didn’t have time to figure that out. My mom was divorcing my dad. Or so I thought.

I did it over and over again that week. And a few times the week after. Then off and on for the years that followed. Always secretly and always under the conscious ruse of “I love my life, I just want to be skinny!”

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In my early 20s, I discovered yoga and the wellness industry.

Aha! Veganism was the final nudge I needed to give up purging once and for all.

“Purging isn’t healthy!”

I’ll do anything to be healthy.

Veganism led me to everything else. Noelle Kovary included.

Still internalizing every message of the world around me as — “you aren’t perfect yet, but you could be if…”

Same problems. Another label.

The god of my health replaced the god of my weight.

Both the god of my perfection devoted to fueling my subconscious addiction to emptiness.

I’m so fucking empty. And I like it.

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Years passed. I turned 27. Same game, only now I had a daughter-whose-health-was-worth-obsession to blame it on.

Addicted to the binge and the purge of healing. The momentary fix of spending 80 dollars on magnesium. And for what? A sharper eye to catch another gaping hole in my health. You betcha.

But by 30, I wonder…

What’s a nutrient to me when I’m committed to feeling empty?

What’s nourishment to me if not to atone for all the things I’ve yet to attain?

XX