Eating alone my alphabet soup speaks to me (Brenda S. Duster) I'm going to help you crack my code and let you into my mind, heart and soul. Fasten your seat belts because, I should warn you, we may be in for quite a ride! I don't know where to start and I just pray to God that one day it will finish. I'm going to tell you the story, not of what made me bulimic, because that I still do not know, but of the emotional pain I went through, and at times still do. After spending eleven months in a specialised eating disorder hospital, two months as day patient and six as an out patient, I thought I was no longer ill. I'm going to write about how I feel and you can judge for yourself… ' I want to grab hold of all the disgusting lumpy flesh on my body, and rip it off. I want to dig a razor into my arm and watch my warm sweet blood flow out. I want to eat everything in the world and spend the rest of my life vomiting it back up, or eat nothing at all and become so thin it kills me. I will be thin dead or alive!' What I have written above is one of my impulse feelings. At this point in time, I am well enough to think twice before carrying out such drastic actions, but the feeling lives inside me, haunting my every, second, my every hour, my every day. "I cry and I cry and I never stop because nothing changes" It's September 14th, 1997, 7 pm, and I have just consumed enough junk food to feed all the children in London. My belly is sticking out a mile, and I can feel the food rising in my throat. A shadow of guilt lands upon me and I start to get distressed. "Just do it!" I say aloud. "You fat bitch, just get rid it!" Small beads of perspiration form over my forehead and my heart begins to race. Like a robot, my legs pick me up and walk me to the bathroom. I lock myself in a cubicle and squeeze my eyes shut. I roll up my sleeves and kneel down. This is it, here we go. I take my two middle fingers and place them down my throat as far as they will go. I wait, nothing happens? Ok so let's try moving them around. Still nothing happens. I begin to get frustrated. Tears well up in my eyes and I start to shake, sob, and tremble. There is no way that I will allow this food to turn to fat and stick to my revolting ugly body! Scraping of a layer of skin from the bridge of my throat with my sharp dirty nails, I aggressively lunge my fingers down my throat one last time. Aha! Out it all comes, and again, and again, and again, until I am in enough pain to prove pure victory. And that is how it started... My heart is broken, My soul is scarred, My body is abused. Things went from bad to worse. Being in hospital, was a nightmare. At the time I thought I had hit rock bottom, but when I got discharged, that's when the fight really began. Hospital was a comfortable little cave where I could hide away from the real world. I could cry, scream, throw fits and there would be a team of people there willing to pick up the pieces, no matter what. I walked around like a zombie and eventually my numbness turned to pain and I had to get out, I had to be free! For most of my childhood I had felt abandoned, lost, and drowned in money. I was cold. It was as if the nurses in the hospital had wrapped a blanket around me, not a warm one, but yet it was better than nothing and I grabbed any attention I possibly could. Help! I'm screaming, But I have no voice. I'm bleeding, But my blood is invisible. I'm trying to talk, But no one is listening. I'm trying to find hope, But hope is hiding from me I'm fighting But I'm losing. Dear Bulimia I hate you! I hate your every move, your every touch, your every thought. Your evil mind destroys me, my body, my passion for life. You cut through me like a razor, making me bleed, draining out every bit of self- respect that I have. I detest you, despise you, loathe you. You invade me, change me, and control me. I hate you because you hate me and together we make one. Kisses of blood, Aiysha xxx I have given you the introduction to the pool of pain that I am swimming in. This is a small taste of the frustration that eats away at my heart as each split second passes. I fight my way through the hours, days and weeks, because I believe that all is not lost until I give in, and I will never give in. I have everything yet I have nothing, but more importantly I do have everything- I live my life aiming for the moon, for if I were to fall a star would always catch me.