B is for bear, B is for balloon. B is for bulimia. While kids and young adults still remember what the letter b stands for, usually some common noun, my mind takes on a more obscure and dull ideal. Blurry flashbacks and memories round up inside my mind every time I pass near a bathroom or watch my friends share an immense platter of food, the same amount I would binge, just in one meal, all by myself. Unveiling the monsters eating disorders turn out to be would constitute in one of the most arduous and backbreaking tasks one could ever take upon. It’s even worse trying to explain why you do something, while you know in the most remote parts of your mind that “binging and purging” won’t really end the nightmare you wish so soon to end.

The delicacy (more like difficulty, for others) of eating disorders is that it’s a disorder one relatively decides to have. You decide to stop eating, you decide to binge, you decide to purge. You are the author, producer and architect of your disorder, or at least that’s what most people conceive. Nearly all people would judge whenever somebody decides to be open about their eating disorder, while others do comprehend that somewhere, deep inside the memories of that person, there’s a painful, unpleasant and piercing replay of that exact moment that provoked the person to stop eating, to binge, to purge.

Going by the different bathrooms that could be witnesses to my disorder made me feel de same way you feel whenever you’ve just had a small car accident. That exact moment when you get hit or hit something, but realize that you are still well and alive. At the end you end up with that “I’m okay” feeling, but you know that just seconds before, something terminal could’ve happened. Entering any bathroom still consists of me, staring at the toilet, looking for all the good reasons I have to not do it again. To not push myself again, to not make myself suffer in order to feel less of another pain. 

Bulimia still haunts me. It started when I was 12 years old, when the millionth negative comment about my body was made by one of my family members. I eventually got better at hiding it and got away with it for seven years, with nobody ever noticing. I am now 19 years old, second year of college, still trying to fight it. The amount of self-hatred it takes for someone to purge is abominable, but the amount of courage it takes to open up about something, as personal as this, and accept it, is way bigger.

  I am more than my weight, I am more than my body, I am what I love, what I learn, what I dream. I am not my weight, rolls, cellulite, or my XL clothing. I am my smile, my books, my favorite color, my favorite movie. I am more than my eating disorder, and so are you.