It’s helpful to just write to you, even though I don’t think I could start a real conversation with you even if I wanted to. I’d rather handle this on my own. I think that’s why I hung up the phone on the representative when I called the eating disorder hotline.

Last night, I went into the bathroom and was ready to purge again, but then I thought about who I used to be and realized that it wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t worth the agony. So instead I went and jogged for three hours. Not much better, but at least I don’t have to worry about choking on my own vomit.

I’m ready to get better, MV, and I’m going to take it one day at a time. I read somewhere, in an article really written for obese people, that you should take a healthy lifestyle one moment at time. Screw up? Get right back on. So if I purge I’m just going to keep going. Still, there’s no sense in denial. . .

I see people who are underweight or normal weight complaining that they need to “take 15lbs. off” and I just want to reach through my computer and strangle them. I see people asking how many times a day they have to vomit not to absorb any calories from the food they eat. I want to strangle these people, too. It’s not a “happy-fun-time” thing, you morons, it’s a sickness and comes from the Sad Time.

I’m thinking about killing myself–again, but I’m not going to. Long ago the urge to kill myself became one of those far-removed things that I knew I’d never experience. I love life too much MV to kill myself over it. Yet, I’m not afraid of death. Even if I did die, I believe in reincarnation and I’d be brought back to Earth. But through suicide it wouldn’t be a happy existence. I’ll bear my cross, as the saying goes. Funny, I’m using Christian symbolism and I’m not even Christian. . .

I hit a landmark last night, too, MV. I ran my fingers along my collar bone. Usually, I feel a lot of fat there. Then I realized there was no fat there. Just bone. I could feel the spoon end of my collar bone and I said to myself: “Too bony.” Too bony, MV! I’m just going to put on a little fat and be healthy, and be a writer again, and play the piano.

Oh, the piano! I miss sitting down and playing dulcet (or not so dulcet) tunes. I miss the somber Fur Elise, the brilliant Warlike Dance, the goofy Le Petit Negro. I quit piano a long time ago for more time to exercise. I think I might get back into it once I’m out of school. Right now, I have a career to pursue.

I also tore out any super-skinny models from my magazines. I scan the pages of other health magazines for healthy looking people. There’s this one picture I have taped to my wall. The woman is gorgeous! She has these wonderful curvy hips, a full but not enormous chest, and curly hair that hugs her fluffy cheeks.

She holds an umbrella and is wearing a short, strapless dress with black and white patterns on it. She has on brilliant red lipstick and no matter how hard I look, I can’t see much of her collarbone, like you can on me. You can’t see the tendons in her hands, either, though she grasps that umbrella like crazy. I know she’s airbrushed a little, but she doesn’t have a haunted, hungry look in her eyes, discernable under the facade she puts on for the camera. I want to be a little like that, MV.

Just a little.

Maybe you’ll remember me, the girl who was told she “wasn’t sick” with bulimia.

I ended up in the hospital.

It turns out that, during one of my binges, I ate a bunch of unwashed vegetables and caught tapeworm. Now I’m getting help. They finally figured it out. Mom stopped speaking to me, too.

I didn’t get locked up in an in-patient thing, so there was no one there to stop me when I stuck my toothbrush down my throat and puked. First time. It was awful and wonderful at the same time. I felt removed from myself. Pure and clean. Mom doesn’t know. I wouldn’t tell her even if she asked.

Then I thought about killing myself. But I didn’t. I know better. Things get better, they just take a long time. I knew that when I was suicidal the last time. It’s so hard to deal sometimes, though.

I just binged on PopTarts and cheese. I try to tell myself I look good and will feel good once I get away from this. . . this. . . monster. But I still have trouble dealing.

MV, I wish I could be who I was, but I know the bulimia isn’t going to go away. I was going to be a writer, an artist. I was going to be a registered dietician (ironic), a pianist, a mother, and a wife. My life is so occupied by calories and purging that these things will probably never come true. I’m infertile, so I can’t exactly be a mother and I’m so self-conscious I don’t think I could stand to even have a boyfriend, let alone a husband. I’m too busy exercising to draw, play piano, write.

I think I need to get away from food. But how do you get away from something you need? How do you make peace with something you can’t live without, with something that is there whether you like it or not? How do you deal with the sizzling burgers, the vending machine candy bars, the heaping plates of whole wheat crackers and hummus?

Here I am, MV, crying again, like an idiot. I shouldn’t cry. It’s my own fault. I let it happen. I saw it coming and didn’t do anything.

I hope you keep updating this blog. It’s a shame that, as human beings, we have to suffer this way. We’re all beautiful, whether we’re 90lbs or 300lbs. Bones are not beautiful. Neither is vomit, or food obsession, or sickness. The soul and strength of humanity is what’s truly beautiful.

I only wish I’d realized that before I got sick.