I knew my mum had a point. My bank balance was slowly dwindling. But I was also a moody teenager who had far more knowledge about boys after my sixteen years on the planet than she did after her forty. Who the hell did she think she was?
‘Just leave it,’ I said, and stormed off to my room (probably. I did that a lot).
That night, though, I thought about what my mum had said. It was true – Mark always had an excuse as to why he couldn’t come on a train and visit me. But I was so thrilled to have a boyfriend, so excited to have such a handsome boyfriend, that I would’ve done anything to keep him happy.
I knew I was going to screw it up.
The Brain Deviant kept telling me I didn’t deserve Mark – that I was ugly and fat and a waste of space, and that soon enough he’d see it for himself. Very soon, the Brain Deviant told me, Mark would wake up and realize what kind of troll he was with. It was just a matter of time before he came to his senses.
Over time, my anxiety and low self-esteem became so overwhelming that something very strange indeed began happening.
BLEURGHHHHHH!!
Yes, that’s right. I would actually vomit in this handsome boy’s presence whenever I saw him.
Every.
Single.
Time.
One day, Dave the Woman and I decided to accompany Mark and his best mate, George, to Manchester for a day of shopping. Mark idolized George, who was funny, witty, popular and handsome in his own way. (Looking back, he would have made a far better boyfriend than Mark ever did, but that’s hindsight for you.) The boys decided we should all get kebabs for lunch, and, when impressing a boy, having drabs of greyish-brown meat slobbering out of your mouth isn’t exactly sexy. But eager to please Mark and to be seen as ‘one of the boys’, I went along with their lunch of choice.
Food and I had a pretty strange relationship at that time. I was skipping most meals, focusing only on making myself beautiful for Mark. I wasn’t used to eating – not even on my own. Let alone in front of my boyfriend.
I could practically see the calories sweating off the doner meat as it spun round on the rack. I could picture the germs that I imagined were covering the floor and tables of the gross establishment we’d stepped into. As I hesitantly took a bite into the kebab, I suddenly felt a wave of nausea.
‘Oh God.’
‘What?’ Dave whispered.
‘I’m gonna be sick,’ I said, covering my mouth with my hand, and ran to the toilet, which looked even more germ-riddled. My anxiety was in overdrive as I began wondering what a joke Mark and George must’ve thought I was.
Germs. Calories. Fat. Germs. Calories. Fat. The images spun round my head like a merry-go-round.
Once I’d been sick, my face red from the exertion of vomiting, not to mention from embarrassment, I made my way back to the table.
‘Are you OK?’ Mark asked, and I hesitated, paranoid he’d still be able to smell the sick on me.
‘I’m great!’ I lied, and eased away from him slightly, trying to avoid staring at any form of food whatsoever. It was my fault for being so weak as to eat in front of him.
After that, throwing up in front of Mark became a regular occurrence. We’d be holding hands through the high street and I’d have to practically hold my sick in. We’d be watching a film at Dave’s and I’d have to run to the toilet to throw up. One afternoon, George, Mark and I went to the woods, and I threw up in a pile of leaves (I still hope I didn’t puke on a hedgehog in the process). We were once at George’s house, sitting at the dinner table with his parents, who’d cooked us a delicious dinner, and I was seconds away from throwing up in the plate of chilli.
I wasn’t being sick because Mark repulsed me in any way, because he didn’t. He was dreamy. It was simply because I was so overwhelmed that someone as good-looking and cool as Mark could ever possibly want me as his girlfriend; my brain couldn’t compute it. I genuinely believed I didn’t deserve someone as perfect as him, or that other girls would question what he was doing with someone as uncool as me. I was not in peak physical condition anyway, because I was constantly starving.
I was so paranoid about coming across weird or doing something embarrassing in front of him that I couldn’t just enjoy the moment or be myself. Which is mental, because throwing up in front of the boy you think you love is far from normal to say the least. And gradually I began changing who I was in order to make him like me more.
On the days I was at school and didn’t see Mark, I began restricting what I ate even more. I wanted him to see a difference in the fat slob he’d met at the beginning of our relationship. I wanted him to see a difference in me every time.
Losing weight was soon the most important aspect of my life, to the extent that it almost replaced daydreaming about Mark. And soon I had my first goal to look my best for: Dave the Woman’s Super Sweet Sixteenth.
Dave’s mum was the glamorous mum of our year, and was allowing us to have actual alcohol at her daughter’s party – which, to any teenager, made her a very cool mum indeed. About twenty girls in our class were invited, but there was one problem.
‘We can’t have a party without boys, Dave,’ I said.
Dave knew I was right. So she texted Mark, asking if he could bring a bunch of his friends along, to which he happily agreed. The news of this thrilled a bunch of schoolgirls. I was just excited by the fact that it would be my and Mark’s first party as a couple. Him introducing me to his friends, and vice versa, was a sign we were official-official.
Although Dave’s party soon became the topic of conversation during school break times, some mums in the class weren’t happy about this party at all. If I’d ever thought my mum treated me like a baby, these mums made mine look like the chief of a free-love hippy commune.
‘There will be boys/alcohol/a hot tub there?!’ one particularly uptight parent rang to ask Dave’s mum, despite the fact we were now sixteen and incredibly grown-up, thanks very much.
After Dave’s mum managed to convince the Uptight Mum that no, her daughter would not be left alone with (shock horror!) a real-life boy, they came to the conclusion that her daughter was allowed to stay for a couple of hours, then she and a few of her friends would be picked up and taken home early.
Still, I wasn’t going to allow the Uptight Mum’s paranoia to ruin my evening.
‘You’ve lost a lot of weight, Charli,’ Dave’s mum said, putting her arm round my shoulder, and I felt a rush of pride and excitement fill my veins. It was the first time anyone had noticed what I’d done, and it meant whatever I was doing was working. If she noticed, Mark must have noticed, too.
Mark arrived with three of his friends to begin with – George, Harry and Joe. George hated Joe. Joe was an emo, and brought along his girlfriend, Sarah, who was rather clingy and annoying, and George hated her, too. George hated everyone, actually, and was too cool for the lot of them. Harry was the son of a vicar, but couldn’t have been less religious.
‘Mark’s told me so much about you,’ Sarah squealed. ‘I just knew we’d be friends! You are beautiful!’
To someone who’d never felt beautiful in her entire teenage life, Sarah’s kind words comforted me slightly. But what made me feel even more special was when Mark squeezed my shoulders, letting her know I was with him.
‘She’s the most beautiful girl in the world,’ he said, kissing me on the forehead, and I fell in love with him just a little bit more.
I wore his hoodie that night – a sign to any teenage girl that I was a hundred-per-cent his girlfriend. Before long, the party was in full swing. The birthday girl was drunk, everyone in the hot tub was either plastered or getting off with each other, someone was trying to pull Dave’s mum, and Sarah kept hanging around me like a fly.
While my memory from then on is a bit hazy, all I know is that the Uptight Mum came to pick a group of tipsy girls up from the party just as it got good, and then me, Sarah, Joe, George, Mark and a few other nameless faces were drinking in a zipped-up tent together i
n the garden.
‘Get off with each other!’ Mark said to me and Sarah while clutching a can of Stella. While I can say Sarah was definitely not my type, I wanted to please Mark, so I kissed her in an attempt to impress him.
Unlike when Katy Perry kissed a girl, I wasn’t too sure I liked it. It wasn’t because she was a girl, necessarily, but because (1) Sarah wasn’t a good kisser, (2) she was actually quite irritating, and (3) having a bunch of male eyes gawping at us over cans of warm beer wasn’t exactly a turn-on.
‘Gross!’ Mark yelled afterwards, even though he was the one who had encouraged it. God, he was charming.
‘That was great,’ Sarah said, and I smiled weakly, trying not to hurt her feelings.
‘I need to chat to Charli alone for a minute,’ Mark said, giving Joe, Sarah and the others a knowing look.
‘Er … oh, yeah!’ Joe said. ‘Come on, guys, let’s get some more drinks.’
Everyone left the tent suddenly, and I eventually realized through my tipsy state that Mark and I were alone.
After kissing for a few seconds, it became quite clear there and then what Mark wanted. And although I’d obviously thought about sex (hello, I was a sixteen-year-old girl) I was absolutely certain that losing my virginity in a tent that reeked of booze, and suspiciously like urine, was not what I wanted.
‘No, Mark,’ I said, pulling away.
‘Oh, come on,’ he said, starting to unzip my (well, his) hoodie from off my shoulders.
‘I said no,’ I repeated, pushing him away. Why wasn’t he listening?
Mark sighed loudly, like I was the world’s biggest let-down, and threw himself back down in the tent.
‘Oh, whatever,’ he said, and made some comment about how I was frigid.
‘You’re drunk,’ I said.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said, waving me away.
I hated feeling like I’d done something wrong, and I had a real guilt complex about letting people down. But I got out of the tent, wished Mark goodnight without really meaning it, and went into Dave’s house.
‘Are you OK?’ Dave asked once I got inside.
‘Yeah, of course,’ I lied. ‘Come on, let’s go to bed.’
To say I felt guilty for not having sex with Mark was an understatement. He made me feel terrible for not having done so.
You can imagine what this did for my self-esteem. You can also imagine what this then did for my anxiety. I believed that because he was acting off with me, that somehow made me less of a person. Once the excitement from Dave’s party had calmed down and life got back to normal, something odd began happening to Mark.
You see, as time went on, and I fell deeper and deeper head-over-heels in love with him, Mark began to realize how good-looking he actually was. And, over time, something else became apparent:
Mark became a bit of a dick.
Now, realizing you’re a good-looking bloke isn’t the problem. It’s when you think you can have your cake and eat it that it becomes a problem, or when you think your looks give you the right to behave or treat people in whichever way you want. (Note: they don’t.) Mark revelled in the fact that girls practically threw themselves at his feet, and that boys wished they could look like him. If I didn’t want to have sex with him, he certainly let me know there were plenty of girls who did. And it was during this time that he quite clearly latched on to my insecurities, and decided to put me down whenever he could.
It started off as an eye-roll here and there in front of his friends. They’d laugh at something I’d say and he’d tut and make out I was a nuisance, making me anxious again. It didn’t matter that other people thought I was cool. The only person I wanted to impress was Mark.
We’d go shopping and girls would do double takes at him down the high street … and he’d then do double takes back. He’d tell me about a girl he knew, Jennifer, who allegedly had the world’s best figure, and who all the boys fancied. He played on my insecurities, getting off on the fact he was knocking me down.
As a result, I started to overcompensate by starving myself more. He must’ve thought I was so gross with my flat chest and fat thighs, mustn’t he? Maybe if I lost just a bit more weight, he’d view me like Jennifer. Maybe if I did it a bit quicker, he’d like me more.
I can’t remember the first time I deliberately made myself sick, which I think goes to show how out of control I was. If I remembered the first time I made myself sick, it would’ve meant I was in control of my actions, when I can categorically say I was not.
I’d done it a few times a couple of years prior, around the ages of thirteen or fourteen, but it hadn’t become a regular occurrence. I hadn’t made a big deal of it at the time – it was just something I’d done. Weird, right? In fact, back then I didn’t even know there was a word for my now biggest secret: bulimia.
I knew bulimia was when people deliberately made themselves sick. But other people suffered from bulimia, not me. I refused to admit I was as mental as they were. I wasn’t crazy! I just liked getting rid of stress from time to time. What was wrong with that? It was a secret I kept between me and me only. If it wasn’t hurting anyone, why did it need to be anybody else’s business?
Despite the vile taste and texture in my mouth, all I recall is the overwhelming sense of relief – a feeling that nothing could get to me any more, that the calories I’d eaten no longer counted. I’m not saying Mark made me bulimic, because of course he didn’t. He just added to the list of worries that were already ingrained in me, like not feeling wanted or loved, or not feeling like I was doing well in school. It was the final trigger I needed to send me over the edge. The catty comments, the self-loathing, the stress from exams, the insecurities I felt about Mark … it all disappeared in an instant.
I get why people find bulimia difficult to stomach (excuse the pun). Why would someone want to purposefully stick their fingers down their throat and make themselves vomit? Being sick isn’t exactly pleasant, is it?
The truth is, there are lots of reasons. Yes, weight loss is of course a motivation, but the weird thing about bulimia is that you don’t actually lose that much weight – if any – from throwing up. It’s mainly water weight. Just as there are girls at a size eight who do it, there are girls who are size eighteen who do it. Bulimia doesn’t discriminate. The underlying factor is that it’s a stress reliever, and everyone, regardless of shape or size, wants to rid stress.
Now, I know I would’ve been better squeezing a stress ball or playing with a fidget spinner, but when you’re in the midst of an eating disorder you’re far from rational. You need to get rid of this angst and pressure as quickly as possible. All I can tell you is that once I’d been sick it felt like a weight had been lifted from within me. Well, obviously some weight had been lifted – heavy, thick, gross, lumpy, sour yellow and beige vomit, to be precise – but it was so much more than that. It was an invisible feeling of anguish that no one else quite understood, bar me.
My anxiety fuelled my bulimia. The Brain Deviant would tell me I was worthless, fat and gross, that it wasn’t surprising everyone in school hated me or thought I was ugly. It was all my fault. It didn’t take a lot to make myself sick. It could be homesickness, or an argument with my family, or the stress of not being able to finish an assignment. I didn’t even need to be full to throw up.
Sometimes I’d binge and binge on food until I physically couldn’t eat any more – crisps, cake, biscuits, bread – the delicious carby things that fill you up and give you the most energy. Then, when I was sure nobody was around, I’d down a ton of water to help the sick leave my body quicker, go to the toilets and throw it all up, fighting the sour and bitter taste in my mouth.
Once I’d made myself sick as much as I wanted or needed, I felt like I could see clearly again – that the foggy mist inside my head had cleared. Only then could I get on with the rest of my day and face problems head on. But that’s the problem: it didn’t solve anything.
In my experience, bulimia is an addiction. Once I’d d
one it and seen the stress disappearing in front of me, I somehow felt ‘pure’ again. Of course that feeling didn’t last for very long. Most of what I experienced afterwards is the result of having physically worn my body out. Once I’d been sick so much that my body only produced bile, and I’d managed to calm my anxiety down a bit and recover slightly, I still hated myself. I became annoyed at my body for no longer being able to vomit properly. I was annoyed at myself for being a weak, pathetic person who couldn’t eat food normally. If you didn’t binge eat, you wouldn’t have to make yourself sick, would you?
But I could no longer eat a normal amount of food like a normal person. It was everything in sight, or nothing at all.
Deep down, bulimia fed my obsessive and addictive behaviour – and rather than taking the time to calm myself down in a way that didn’t harm myself, I’d do anything I could to rid myself of the anxiety quickly.
Whenever I got stressed again – which was inevitable, because, hey, that’s life – I started getting the urge to throw up. Stress can come from many different places: pressure from exams, from parents, from not being able to digest a nasty comment or two, for hating your body or punishing yourself for eating too much. The reasons are unique to everyone who has it, and I’m just speaking for myself. Soon that familiar ‘itch’ would wash over me again, and I just NEEDED to get rid of it. I’d begin to feel sweaty, wondering how I could sneak out and throw up without people noticing. The last thing I wanted to do was get caught, because that would mean my secret would be out.
I have made myself sick in lots of different places in my life. I’ve done it in public toilets while out shopping, while my mum is blissfully unaware, flicking through the sales rack in a shop nearby. I’ve done it on holiday, while everyone is having fun by the pool. I’ve done it on a plane, and, no, I don’t mean the Mile High Club. I’ve done it through critical episodes of EastEnders while my family is all together downstairs. I’ve done it on numerous birthdays and Christmases, throwing up delicious home-cooked food because I was too anxious about not knowing the exact calorie content, or because I was oversensitive to something a relative said. There should be a worldwide map with pins of places I’ve vomited in, including high above the Mediterranean Sea.
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