Introdction

Here's a little rundown of my ED-related history:
I was a skinny, flat-chested little teenager until I went to boarding school and promptly put on 20 lbs. Returning home that first Christmas & surrounding myself with all of my Barbie-figured, gorgeous friends was pretty unfun, and I promised myself I'd lose all that weight by the summer. I began to run, but I couldn't help but wonder if it wouldn't also be helpful to join the veritable throng of girls who visited the bathrooms after every meal. Binging (and often purging) was simply a way of life for many of the students, so I certainly wouldn't be alone.
And it was easy for me, I was a natural! At the time, I completely romanticized the whole thing - terrorizing my art teacher with pictures of bony, big-headed figures in an adventurous palette of red and black, purging late at night and then sneaking on to the roof to smoke a cigarette. Black eyeliner, emo-music, etc...
Not to mention that I had a strong, almost proud, sense that I was carrying on a family tradition. Though my own mother had only been bulimic a couple of years ("I stopped because I wasn't good at it. I just got fatter."), my grandmother was a life-long purger. And she, too, was a natural. With thick dark bangs and porcelin skin, she was always the pinaccle of style and beauty. Not to mention her tiny Audrey Hepburn figure that she tended with diligent regurgitation. "She didn't even have to stick her finger down her throat." My mother had told me. And "She had a very close relationship with her dentist." At the time, these statements didn't invoke fear. Even though I started throwing up shortly after my grandmother died, I associated her sickness with elegance and self-control...not with the sickly, delirious physique I watched the nurses and doctors struggle with during the year of hospitalization that preceded her death.
So that was how it began. Now I'm a pro. I've been living with four roommates for the past 5 months and not a one has the faintest idea that I throw up at least once a day. Of course, the cashiers at the supermarket below my house must be fully aware of the situation... But having worked in food service myself, I'm sure they spot customers like me all the time.
Okay, enough for now. Night!