Women’s Independent Press

By Kathleen M. Rodgers

Author’s note:

In Part I: Dying To Be Thin, the author, a former military wife, describes a typical morning spent bingeing and purging. In Part II, she addresses her recovery.

One morning I wake in severe pain. Giant claws are shredding my insides and I have black diarrhea. It hurts to even sip water.
My husband is zipping up his flight suit and turns to look at me. “What’s wrong, babe?” He is unaware that I’ve been up in the middle of the night, bingeing and purging.

The pain rips through my gut and I double over, measuring my breaths. “I think I’m bleeding internally,” I say, too ashamed to tell him I’ve been abusing laxatives, too. Except for a kidney stone in high school, I’ve never been in so much pain.

My husband’s eyes meet mine, and in that silence between us, we both know the truth: I’ve hit rock bottom. For the first time in our relationship, it’s as if he’s seeing me for the first time. His eyes look past the vibrant blonde who doesn’t know a stranger, the fun-loving girl with dreams to become a writer. What he sees is a troubled young woman desperate for help, and he’ll do anything to save me.

After a few discreet phone calls, and with the approval of Champus (now Tri-Care), I am seated in the office of Dr. Richard Popeski, a civilian psychiatrist based in Tucson, AZ. Dr. Popeski specializes in eating disorders. Within minutes I have a name for what is wrong with me: bulimia. It’s 1981, and the term bulimia has only been around a couple of years. For some reason, putting a name to my odd behavior gives me the first trickles of hope.

Then Dr. Popeski drops the bomb. He looks me square in the eye and says, “There are no magic pills. If you really want to get better, and are sincere, it will be the hardest thing you’ll ever do in your life.”

At first I am consumed with the need to confess all the rituals that go along with my eating disorder, the burning shame that singes me after every binge. Then one day he tells me quite pointedly, “We can talk about your vomit, purging, excessive running, weighing yourself 20 times a day. Or we can get to the heart of what is troubling you.”

My ego bruised, I stare at the floor embarrassed. Then the tears come, and with each sob, a little piece of the fortress I’ve built around myself begins to crumble. Out come my feelings of betrayal over my parents’ divorce, my lack of self-worth, and my fear of abandonment. And finally, I admit that I am lost and do not have adequate coping skills.

A breakthrough comes the day my doctor helps me see that my lifelong battle with food and weight are not at the heart of my compulsive behavior. The bulimia is merely a symptom of something else: anger, rage, despair over things I have no control over. When I binge, I am stuffing emotions down, not just food.

And when I throw up, anger and rage come spewing out, too. For years I have internalized these normal human feelings – and act them out through bulimia.

Dr. Popeski teaches me to take each minute, hour and day at a time. “Think of it as taking two steps forward and one back,” he says. “Eventually you will get there.”
Two steps forward, one back, becomes my motto. If I stumble and binge, I am not to chastise myself or wallow in guilt. Easier said than done, but something clicks and I go for days without bingeing, although it is tougher than I imagine.

Along with my weekly sessions, I sign up for college classes at the local community college and attend all the required social functions that go along with my husband’s military career. But I am still bingeing up to three times a week and feeling guilty because I am not over bulimia, despite the time and money spent to get better.

Two years after I start therapy, Tom gets orders and we move to Texas. Without the crutch of therapy, I suffer a relapse and the binge/purge cycle starts to consume me again. While I don’t exactly give up my dreams to pursue writing and finish college, I’m not actively working toward my goals.

Then my youngest brother is killed in a car wreck and his death rocks my world. At the time, I am almost 24 and Larry is ten days away from turning 21. Jolted by his sudden death, I feel an enormous guilt because I am still alive and he is dead. The night before his funeral, I make my brother a promise.

After everyone clears out of the visitation room at the funeral home, I kneel before his casket and say, “Larry, I promise to stop wasting my life. I will get better (a reference to the bulimia), and I’ll start writing again. With new determination, I pour my energy into writing – my new form of therapy – and six months later I sell my first freelance story to a bass fishing magazine. The second piece I sell is a story about Larry.
Two years after my brother’s tragic death, I give birth to my first son at an Army hospital in Alaska. Becoming a mother gives me direction in life, something I’ve been hungering for, and I can finally empathize with my own mother on how hard it is to take care of yourself when you’re busy taking care of someone else. By the time my second son is born, I have conquered bulimia and my writing career takes off.

Today, 28 years after my brother’s death, I’m still trying to make good on that promise. With numerous national magazine and newspaper articles under my belt, and the 2008 release of my debut novel “The Final Salute,” I’m working to bring my second novel to life. And I finally got around to earning that college degree. I hope my brother is proud of me. I feel his energy sometimes when I’m alone or when the wind blows through the trees late at night when I’m sitting outside in the dark.
I long to tell him that I’m not wasting my life. That I am better. And I’m still writing…
And each morning when I wake up, I thank God, and I think of the doctor who gave me the tools to take two steps forward…

Kathleen M. Rodgers is an award-winning author whose work has appeared in national and local publications. She is the author of the novel The Final Salute and has recently completed Johnnie Come Lately, a novel about a woman named Johnnie Kitchen, a recovered bulimic who’s still haunted by secrets from her past. To read more about Kathleen’s work, please visit her website: www.kathleenmrodgers.com