Where did I ever get the notion to throw up my food. Easy for me. At age nine a family Thanksgiving dinner. I over ate and was in pain from being over full. All the kids were talking about the food when a younger girl blurted out that her grandma would go throw up her food when she did not like what she ate. Than come back to a table and ate more so the host would believe that she like the food. Like it enough to have seconds.

Well I snuck off and stuck a finger down my throat. My face turned red; My heart was pounding. When I finished my sinful deed I thought for sure God would strike me dead. I could not sleep for a few days and prayed for God to spare me from being struck down dead.

Christmas dinner the same thing. Pain, relief, fear. It was a year later that I took up throwing up all my holiday meals. Little did I know what it would escalate to.

From ten years old and on I started to throw up every time I over ate. Maybe one to five times a month. My fears faded into the back ground as older more terrible fears from surgery and a mean dad took over. I have had emotional problems starting at the age of three. I was medically treated off and on very far apart most of my life for short periods of time.

After my second hip surgery the doctors really tried to get the message to me to loose weight. This would help my hip last longer. I had a weight problem most of my life. Obesity runs rapid in most of the people in my dads side. I was twelve and medically depressed from taking Valums. My father always told us girls how fat we were. He would grab what little fat we had and give it a shake and tell us we would never find a boyfriend. He did that through half of our teens. By age fourteen my dad ran away from home. My interest in boys was beginning to take off, but I was to shy to approach one except in a fight. I spent alot of time hiding from others. It was to painful to have anyone look at me. Not because I was fat, but shy. Afraid of everyone. By this age I was throwing up when ever I felt fat. Also all holiday meals. I was learning which foods not to eat that did not come up easily. I also could throw up by just leaning over. I also learned to throw up silently. I was in control now. It felt good to be in control of something. I liked eating and I liked throwing up. Not a soul ever knew I was throwing up. My first husband I married divorced and remarried and divorced again was sexually abusive and emotionally abusive to some degree. He would tell me how fat I was and threaten to lock me in a closet. It told me what a failure I was to my doctors, my hip, my husband. I tried to make up by being super human.

I became super mom. Clean the house spotless twice a week. Make meals for four even when dog sick and held down a job. I would throw up 6 to 20 times a day. I would hide food for late night binges. Finally in my mid twenties my health finally took slight turns. I would live on only two to four hours of sleep and still had nervous energy to give to every living soul I knew. It would make me so mad that no one could keep up. The late night binges were to help keep my secret, but when I threw up at times my chest would break out in tiny blood blisters. I had to cut more foods from my diets so that the easier food would be eaten to throw up later. Ice Cream, Cake. My heart would race so hard for to long after big binges and purges.

Around age 21 my original hip surgeon died of cancer. I wanted to cry, but dad had taught us all to well not to. So I let my emotions vent with exercise. It had been years sense I had exercised. It was P.E. in sixth grade that had caused my hip to fall apart so that it had to be redone. I found exercise as addictive as throwing up. Now I had a new way to feel in control. I joined a gym with trainers. I became a muscle women. On top of that I started construction work. Concrete Laborer. I quit eating. I went for 21 days with no meals. Every time I felt like passing out. I would drink Perrier water and ate a very small apple. The smallest apples I could find. For the first time in my life I was skinny. Even with all the muscles I wore a size 1 in womens' pants and size 14 in little girls clothes. I would do 200 stomach crunches every day. During my second divorce from the same husband is when I went to a counselor and in private told her about the throwing up. I had seen two counselors before. One at age 18 and another at age 21. This was my first women counselor. I also was learning not to be shy. I realized I was killing myself. From there I told my mom and sisters. My counselor had been shocked at how many times a day I threw up. There were times it reached over 30 times a day. Between starving myself; followed by days of binging. I struggled to correct it all. So I started to eat and weight started to go back on. I never did learn how to overcome on my own. It was the side effects that slowed me back down to throwing up two to three times a day.

Then about age 44 I had my first computer and found a group called Hiller. A group for loosing weight, but for me it taught me real control of my disorders. I learned to chew my food and sip my water. No more huge bites. I cured my reflux disease and got off medication. The only time I throw up now is when I started eating to fast or to big of bites. When I do fail that and throw up. My chest and heart hurts. My head feels like it is going to pop off and my chest breaks out in blood blisters. So very rarely now do I fall. I wish I could have controlled it sooner before the health problems drove back the bulimia. I wonder how many years I have carved off the end of my life from years of abuse. So those who are younger. Get help. You can not do it alone. Try everything out there that is available to help you. Somewhere is something that will help you gain control. You just have to find it and try not to do that alone. Two heads are better than one. I hope of those who are struggling will find my story as an encouragement to keep up the fight. Realized it might be the rest of your life fight. Now and years from now you are still going to need to be able to get away from that slow death. Start now.