It has been argued that food and eating have replaced sex as our foremost cultural taboo. To some extent I agree with this but would point out that the taboo is not against food, or sex, or flesh, but against a loss of control. Our most hallowed virtue in modern society is self-control, personal “power” (also the most hallowed virtue in my own family). If you thumb through the cannon of philosophy, you find Augustine and Co. speaking of women with the same fear and virulence that we now use to speak of food, as something “sinful,” something that “tempts,” something that causes a loss of control. “The slimy desires of the flesh,” Augustine writes. Note: not the flesh itself, but its desires, arising from the flesh, dismantling our control.

But, as is always the case with bulimia, it is at once tempting, seductive, and terrifying. It divides the brain in half: you take in, you reject; you need, you do not need. It is not a comfortable split, even early on. But early on, its pros seem to outweigh its cons. You have a specific focus, your thoughts do not race as much. They stay in an orderly row: go home, eat, throw up. The problem in your life is your body. It is defined and has a beginning and an end. The problem will be solved by shrinking the body. Contain yourself.

It is commonly assumed that women with eating disorders have a neurotic fear of sex, and that this fear manifests itself in a desperate attempt, at puberty, to stave off the increasingly visible sexual signs of their bodies. Some women do have this fear, but in some cases the reasons are perhaps less related to an individual’s own fear of sex — I personally was not afraid of sex, merely ashamed that it so fascinated me — than to a fear that other people will see them, and judge them, as sexual. Eating-disordered people are often far more concerned with other people’s perceptions than with their own feelings. Fear of sexuality may well have something to do with a culture that has a highly ambiguous, conflicted view of female sexuality, as well as a family that shares this perception.

My neurosis surprised even me. All of a sudden, I was a mess. It’s quite possible that I had some preexisting depression and/or anxiety disorder and/or mania, and the confusion simply gave it a chance to surface. And it did surface…I developed an acute, bizarre fear of everything. I was a walking bundle of anxiety, crying easily and afraid of the dark, the kids at school, the teachers, the sun, the moon, the stars. I got it in my head that prayer would work. I began to pray constantly, frantically, as I peered around me to see if anyone was watching. I dropped to my knees, pressing my nails into the palms of my hands, praying wildly for God to forgive me, muttering manic prayers that would’ve made little sense to any god.

By November, you wish you were dead. You want nothing more. Every day, every fucking day, you run up the steps of the house, breathing hard, swing open the cupboards, thinking: You pitiful little bitch. Fucking cow. Greedy pig. All day, your stomach pinches and spits up its bile. You sway when you walk. You begin to get cold again.