I am ashamed.

So very ashamed.

Yesterday, I blogged about the fact that I had gone so many weeks without an episode, without giving into the devil inside me. I had gone six, seven weeks without binging and purging.

All I did was taunt the beast.

I don’t know why I did it. I was attending my online lecture, calm and quiet, when it started. A cookie. Then another. Then another.

While the class went on, unknowingly a witness and an accomplice to my self-destruction, I shoved it in. Cookies.

Chips. If it was edible, it was going down.

My brain screamed at me. It yelled and cursed and chastised me.

“You don’t even like cookies!”

“You are not even HUNGRY!”

“You’ve had dinner. And a snack. Now STOP.”

But my damned hands wouldn’t stop. They couldn’t. Treacherous, five-fingered harbingers of hate and lust and sloth. Just shoving away.

Oh, and my mouth!

The greedy bitch – she took it all. Happily, eagerly, little porcelain teeth gnashing with joy and ecstasy as the chocolate melted and the crumbles fell.

It lasted maybe five minutes. A package of cookies. A bag of tortilla chips. Gobbled up. Devoured. Inhaled with barely a breath between bites.

The lecture continued.

How were they to know the sin I had just committed?

My stomach flipped and the bile rose in my throat.

What had I done? What could I do?

I excused myself as quickly as I could from the closing banter of my class, shoving my laptop away and rushing to the only salvation, the only punishment and recourse available to me: the drugstore.

I had no other option.

Of course, ipecac syrup was out. Why have places stopped carrying this god-send for the bulimics? Perhaps they realize that their product is never used with the right intentions and that they’re encouraging (and enabling) people to continue this self-destructive habit. Well played, pharmaceutical companies, well played. I’ll just find another way.

I had to settle on the old favorite: laxatives.

Would 15 pills be enough? I’ll buy the 90 count, just in case.

In the darkness of my car, no one to witness (or mock or judge), I popped them, washed down by sugar free Gatorade [as if it mattered anymore] and prayed it would hurt as much as I wanted it to. Please be painful. Please let the memory of this pain last long enough that it prevents a future binge. Please let this be the last time I go through this.

I’m not religious, but prayers filled the car like music fills the church. Please, God, please.

When I got home, I told my husband I had a sour stomach (not a lie) and he felt guilty that it might have been the dinner he brought me. The thoughtful, healthy dinner he dropped off that served as an appetizer to my binge.

Ashamed to tell him the truth, I let him believe that.

“Perhaps the chicken was bad?” I offered.

I’m a terrible human being.

The pills kicked in around 4am, the pain in my abdomen so violent that my half-asleep brain was convinced that a murderer was stabbing me, unrelentingly, eager to rip the very intestines from my body.

Purge, purge, purge.

Three hours, off and on.

Step on the scale… down.

Down, down, down.

No… don’t let that smile creep on your face as the numbers drop. You’re sick. Sicko. Look what you did to yourself. Look what you’re doing. Look what you’ve done.

I couldn’t go to work today, my stomach in shreds, my head aching. I’ve done this to myself.

WHY?

I’m ashamed. So very ashamed.

~ Tori