Denial: a state of mind marked by a refusal or an inability to recognize and deal with a serious problem.

The thing is…for me…I never truly denied that I was bulimic. I would deny it to other people when I was confronted, but not to myself. It was hard to deny that I was bulimic when I was sticking my finger down my throat or using laxatives. For myself, I wasn't so much denying as minimizing.

Minimizing: making something smaller than it actually is; diminishing.

I was convincing myself that the problem of bulimia was more of a choice than a compulsion. After all, it wasn't that big of a deal; I brushed my teeth after each episode, never mind the esophageal damage I was doing and the fact that my face was bright red for 10 minutes afterwards due to broken capillaries. What I didn't know about were the electrolyte and potassium imbalances that could have landed me in the hospital or in a coma.

Besides, I still thought I could quit whenever I wanted to, I could quit after the next binge if I wanted, or after I lost a few pounds, or after my friend's wedding where I just ate a little too much wedding cake. I was convinced that if I really wanted, and if I had enough willpower, I could just stop. I deluded myself into thinking I was in control of the eating disorder but the reality of the situation was that the eating disorder was in control of me.

It was my only coping mechanism for stress. Any stressor had the potential to trigger an episode. A low grade on a test…boyfriend problems…family issues…just waking up on the wrong side of the bed could have me vomiting by breakfast. I couldn't control my environment so I felt anxious. Anxiety led me to eat. Eating led to more anxiety about my weight. My weight, that was one thing I could control. And I did, often.

There were times in my life where I thought I was doing okay, when I wasn't binging regularly, when I was only throwing up after I had eaten something "bad." What I didn't realize was on the days when I was eating something "bad," I was eating that item to cope with something else. At some point in my childhood I stopped dealing with my hard-to-deal with emotions and turned my focus to food and weight, a much easier to control situation.

If someone or something upset me it was okay, because if I could just lose enough weight I would be able to deal with it differently. So it didn't matter how I dealt with it at the time because eventually, it would be different. When I was thin, I'd be able to deal with anything. It was a wonderful tool to keep me in my "non-real-life" fantasy world. As long as I kept looking at my life through a weight filter, I never really had to live my life through my own eyes or my own experiences; I could wait until later to start really living.

Once I realized that I was not in control of the disorder, rather it was controlling me and I was depending on it to cope with life, then could I begin to take the first real step in healing, only then could I accept the situation for what it was. After accepting the reality of my denial and dependency I was able to admit that I needed help and I was able to start looking for it.