relapse--a gift?

thanks heather so much for your response, comments and questions. can relapse be a gift, or "perfect", in the sense of leading us to a more genuine recovery and fuller life?

i have often thought about my relapse as maybe a blessing in disguise. when i look back on my almost 4 years of "recovery", it is clear that i was not really living life to the fullest. i still suffered from low self-esteem, bouts of severe depression, poor body image, fear of food or rather my desires of food, occasional binging, and self-deprivation following binges. still i thought i had made huge gains by not purging.

the height of my bulimia was around age 25. i was b/p 7-8 times per day and keeping down no food whatsoever. i was throwing up carrots sometimes. i had been arrested twice for stealing food the year earlier because i could not afford the binges during grad school (can you believe it--a social work grad student stealing food everyday). i was promiscuous and sleeping with assholes. i became pregnant, no big surprise and a huge shock and disappointment to my family who all thought i was in recovery....also the first family member to become pregnant out of wedlock. what a mess. and i was so scared.

luckily, my food cravings were replaced with food aversions during the pregnancy. i simply did not have such intense desires to binge. i still did b/p but much less often and mostly from loneliness while being pregnant. i was committed though to staying healthy and having a healthy baby and slowly, my b/p decreased. by the end of the pregnancy, i was practically free from purging behavior other than once per month and even then it did not feel like bulimic behavior since i would never plan to purge...it was more like morning sickness.

when the baby was born, i felt like it was my ticket to freedom from bulimia, the start of a new life...and it was. my baby was adopted by my aunt, something that was decided from the first months of pregnancy. she had already been planning to adopt due to a horrible miscarriage she suffered and an inability to have anymore children. i knew i could not give my baby everything she needed and that she deserved so much more. this may sound odd but i actually felt that having my daughter out of wedlock and giving her up for adoption were such a gift since it freed me from the compulsion to purge. i think of her as having saved my life. i can honestly say that until 6 months ago, i felt no such desire to purge. i would have dreams of throwing up and wake up in a cold sweat relieved that is was only a dream. but purging was not part of my life or an option anymore.

however, after the baby, my food intake invariably was always correlated to my love life. everytime i would enter a new relationship, i would become so excited and hopeful, i would loose my appetite and with it the 5 pounds. it almost felt manic....not that i know what full-blown mania feels like. i had no desire for food, only for this new man in my life or maybe the hope that this was the beginning of my life. how long i had waited....and how disappointed i would feel when it became clear that this man was not the one for me. how pathetic i feel just to read what i wrote but nevertheless, it is true.

i believe my biggest trigger for binging is loneliness which is why i have found food a comfort my whole life. i have always felt lonely, apart from, different from the others, etc... i am much less lonely than i was say 5 years ago but i still am obsessed with finding that "true" love, my dreams of being a mother and a wife, of making a home that maybe i always longed for myself growing up but never had. and yet, having self-insight to this and DOING something about are vastly different from each other.

i choose today to view this part of my life as a gift. many will not understand but those of you who suffered through a major relapse and came out on the other end will understand and i believe that it is not only possible but a great opportunity.

today i did binge and purge twice. i had all the food from yesterday's stockpile which i could not finish over the weekend. i could not wait to get home and consume it. i felt almost excited about it. i will be honest and say that even as i sat listening to my 5:00 client for therapy, i was distracted by my desire for food. i am so ashamed of this and yet i want to be honest about it. my bulimia has taken over my life in less than 4 months...even my devotion to my career cannot distract me from it entirely. but i know it does not have to be this way. i am looking forward to sunday, my first day of abstinence.

thanks again for all of you out there and your blogs.