What came after I beat an eating disorder?

(trigger/spoiler, the answer is: disordered eating)

I’d first had the idea as a teen. That you could not just have your cake and eat it, but, ascending to the next level, you could have it, eat it, then induce yourself to vomit it up. I believed I was the first one to think of this, a bit like George Harrison not realising ‘My Sweet Lord’ was the same tune as ‘He’s So Fine’. Like that, but disgusting. The important foundation in falling into an eating disorder was, until I was old enough to be viewed sexually, my self-esteem problem was that my esteem was too high.

A very, very beautiful actress a generation my senior confronted me on what she suspected I’d fallen into, by explaining that she’d struggled with it at my age too. She, also, had a Mother who told her she was wonderful and brilliant and gorgeous and destined for greatness. She said when she’d look at herself in the mirror after a bulimic episode, with burst blood vessels in her eyes and vomit on her blotchy cheeks, she could spit “Ha! I CAUGHT YOU!” That the person in the mirror was the real her, revealed.

The bulimia had accelerated within weeks of living in the States - yes, I had the shock of leaving my Mum for a new country, but maybe I also struggled with how to be a “good” American consumer when I moved to New York at 21. Supermarkets were just amazing to me, for their curly hair products, their low cost mascaras - but it was their selection of iconic 1950’s mini-cakes that really tipped me over the edge into the sunken place. Twinkies. Ho hos. Dings dongs. Lil Debbies. Moon Pies. Frosted chocolate Americana that make you think of ‘Happy Days’. Looking back, choosing them as your gateway to chronic bulimia was like vomiting up The Fonz. But that’s what I did, until a great portion of my life was organised around it.