My Story- Reaching the Bottom

continued from post- My Story, The beginning


It was a devastating feeling for me to achieve what I really felt was missing in my life and yet feel so empty. This came after I very excitedly had written in my diary that I felt like I had arrived at self-discipline. I finally felt in control of my life and body. I had lost the 10 pounds that would make me "perfect". I was much better at gymnastics. It was such a brief moment of seeming victory.

What happened next was the complete opposite. When I went off my strict diet even one little bit, I felt so bad. I would reach for the club of condemnation and hit myself with it. I felt so bad that I would eat more. As I ate more, I felt even worse and tried harder to fill my emptiness. All the while I would tell myself, it was okay, I would start tomorrow by being perfect in my eating again. The yo-yo went back and forth. Eat perfectly, be confronted with food that I wanted to eat, but felt like I shouldn't, eat a little bit of it, feel so bad, then eat more. Binge eating.

Somehow during these few month before summer break, I was able to keep up the weight loss.
Then came the most lonely time of my life. I had been so busy with people and activities in my senior year that I was burned out a little. So in my freshmen dorm life I did not make connections at the beginning of the year along with everyone else. I had a friend from home that was at school with me, her roommate and my own roommate (who was very busy with her boyfriend.) That was enough for me at the beginning, but when I hit this lonely time I did not share it with the few people who were real friends, and I was not connected with all the girls in my dorm. So it was lonely because I did not put the time in to make deep friendships, and I did not share what I was going through with anyone. I just felt bad inside.

I went back home for the summer to work and hopefully work out in gymnastics. Well my chances to work out were rare, my high school friends either were busy with boyfriends or had moved away. I took a job at a pie shop called Marie Callenders. Up till this point in my life, I did not even like pie. I hated it! Well on the last day of my freshman year as I passed through the food line at the dorm, all of a sudden pie looked good to me. So now here I was with a disordered eating problem, lonely, and working all day long by pies and other good looking food. Not a good combinaation. My binge eating was in full swing as I would have one taste of pie, which turned into one piece which turned into eating the whole pie! My poor body. I of course felt so bad about this I would try to make up for it by not eating or fasting. One time after eating an enormous amount of food, I ran 5 miles on a severely full stomach. That summer I regained the 10 pounds that I had lost and gained 10 more.

I still had some hope when I returned to college. I somehow felt that eating in the dorm cafeteria was the answer to my problems. I could eat my 1000 calorie diet and start working out again. Well to go back working out 20 pounds heavier brought me to my all time discouragement. I was so discouraged and felt that something was really wrong with me. I felt that I was the worst person in the world. I had no self-discipline. I could not control my eating. I was like an addicted person on drugs or alcohol. It was no different. After eating a huge amount of food, I would swear to myself that in the morning I would start again and eat perfectly. Of course I never ate "perfectly" again.

This culminated in depression. I became hopeless that I could ever change my life. I knew that it was not in my power. This led to thoughts of taking my life, because what I was experiencing was not a life worth living. I did not have ideas of how to take my life, but in my desperation I cried out to God for help. I remember exactly where I was when I prayed that prayer. I was up in the 10th floor stairwell at the top of Whitney Hall at Chico State University. I don't remember why I did this, but when I came down I found my roommate and another girl in the dorm together. For some reason, I decided to share with them what was going on with me. For the very first time I shared what I thought was my inner ugliness. They were both skinny by my standards, so somehow I did not expect them to understand. In fact, I think that I expected them to confirm what I felt. Instead they listened with compassion and my skinny roommate who could eat anything and not gain weight even if she wanted, said to me," We are going to find help." She didn't say, I will find you help, I understood her to say that together we were going to find help. I was no longer alone. This was the very first baby step in my eventual healing. My next post A NEW BEGINNING will describe how that healing took place.