A Letter To My Bulimia

There is so much I loved about you. Even the sound of your name was appealing to me. Bul-i-mi-a… If that succession of syllables hadn’t already wrapped itself around your meaning, they could’ve easily landed upon some Disney princess, later printed onto posters and uttered by millions of little girls in pink dresses. But that isn’t what happened. Instead, those seven letters found you, and formed a word to describe my life force of the past 3 years.

Now normally at this point, in essays of this nature, friends of yours go on to describe how they met you. They tell of their first diets, vent about their critical calorie-counting mothers or some emotionally engulfing fashion trend that their body (so cruelly) never fit, but I won’t bore you with that. You know how we met, and beyond that, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because we would have met no matter what. I was destined to be yours, just as anyone who has ever truly known you was.

I didn’t like you at first. At first, I thought you were a bad influence, maybe a little too controlling and pretty morally unsound. But you were persistent. You courted me skillfully, and before I knew it, you were a part of me. And it didn’t take long for me to realize what a significant part of me you had become. A couple days without you by my side left me feeling unbalanced, irritable, and eager to feel you near me again. I would count down the hours until I could have you back, fantasize about our reuniting, and comfort myself with memories of the time we’d spent together.

We had our ups and downs. My family never liked you, and that, that was hard. You tore my mom and I apart there for a good while, and I never thought I’d see that happen. I just figured she didn’t get it. You gave me things no one else ever had, and no one ever will. You gave me what everybody wants, but struggles to achieve. Thanks to you, I was a picture of control, elegance, satisfaction and contentment. You were my golden ticket. You swallowed my loneliness, devoured my worry, inhaled my fear and left me numb, in your arms. Just numb.

But I don’t want to be numb anymore. And I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to see you for who you truly are, but you are not someone I can keep around. You tricked me into loving you and forced me into needing you. You manipulated my deepest insecurities, and took advantage of my darkest moments. You swooped in when I wasn’t strong enough to protect myself, and convinced me that the numbness you offered was all the protection I’d ever need.

You don’t care about me, at least not like I cared about you. You never loved me like I thought you did. The people who love you don’t expect you to change. They don’t demand for you to abandon your morals or disrespect the ones you love. They don’t ask you to lie, or steal, ignore your friends or hurt yourself in order to serve nothing but their own growth. They don’t force you lose everything, so that they can watch themselves become your one thing. That isn’t love. I refuse to accept that that, is love.

I could go into detail of the events that brought me here, but to speak of fingers shoved down throats and empty boxes of cookies feels cheap. We were more than that. The binges, the dizziness, the debt, and the hours spent hunched over a toilet do not make for stories that need to be told. They’re gruesome, they’re crass, and above all, they’re private. They’re shadows of a relationship that stood for too long, and are simply undeserving of written energy.

Which is why instead, I would just like to say goodbye. I used to think you saved my life, but I now don’t doubt you’ll kill me. You’ve been there for me more than anyone ever has, but now I can see that it’s okay to be alone. I want to be alone and I need to be without you. Because quite frankly, you aren’t who I thought you were, and I can finally see that you never deserved me or my love.

So goodbye. Goodbye, good day, good FUCKING riddance old friend. You taught me more than I could possibly say.