You Don't Deal with Monsters; You Slay Them.

People make life-altering decisions all the time. Take this job, move to this city, marry this person, etc. Most people however, are not faced with a decision between life and death. Unfortunately, I now find myself, once again, face to face with this choice. Fortunately, the decision is really very simple: I choose to live. What this decision entails is anything but simple or easy. 

As I have previously written, I have been struggling with eating disorders for over half my life. What began as anorexia, morphed into bulimia, and has finally transformed into something so all-controlling and hideous that it has robbed me of a life and left me physically incapacitated. Undoubtedly, I have have made strides of improvement, but the monster still remains. Consequently, my health and ultimately my life are still in jeopardy. 

I am sick of this. 

I am sick of feeling like crap all of the time. I am sick of feeling so emotionally drained that I cannot engage in normal social interactions. I am sick of being out of control while living under the illusion that I am. I know where all of my physical and psychological problems arise from, and I am going to stamp it out once and for all. 

I know that I will never have a normal relationship with food. Like an alcoholic or drug user, I will also be someone with a disease. But the alcoholic or druggie has it comparatively easy compared to me. No one needs alcohol or drugs, so strict avoidance is relatively easy to achieve. Food, on the other hand, presents a problem. I have to eat to live, so I must expose myself to the very thing that is my addiction. Knowing this, my solution is to stop thinking of food as food. Rather, I have to think of food as medicine that is necessary for me to get and stay well. I have been doing this for almost a year now, and as a result I have gained over 30 pounds. Now 150 lbs at 5'10" I am in the healthy weight range, and I hope to continue to increase my weight as I gain muscle mass. 

This is all well and good, but I am continuing to undermine myself by succumbing to the Siren song of food as the enemy. This type of food instigates binge-purge episodes that go on for hours. It is the type of food that breaks me down and renders me incapable of controlling myself. It is the destroyer, but I now know that I can in fact break its hold on me. I have done "trial periods" of up to a week where I avoid any binge-purge episodes. With further incentives, I know that I can give up this behavior indefinitely. I have established these incentives:

By abandoning my self-destructive behavior I will: 
Reclaim my personal life.
Put an end to the physical problems that plague me.
Free up so much time to pursue further academic endeavors.

Finally, I am going to do something rather drastic, but it will serve as daily reminder that I never want to return to the darkness. I am going to undergo a bilateral parotidectomy. Allow me to explain what this means. First of all, the parotid glands are the salivary glands on the sides of the face that normally go unnoticed. These are the same glands that become enlarged in children with mumps. One of the repercussions of constant, forced vomiting is that the parotid glands very noticeably swell or hypertrophy. Often this becomes a permanent deformity that gives a person's face a pronounced bloated look around the jaw line. This is the case with my own parotid glands. As a result, every time that I look in the mirror I see the damage I have inflicted upon myself. A parotidectomy is the removal of the superficial portion of the parotid gland, and undergoing this procedure will return my face to its normal proportions. It will also serve as a powerful incentive to never again engage in purging behaviors. 

New behaviors, a new face, a reclaimed life. Despite my periods of deep depression and dismal outlook on life in general, I do not want to die. Things can and will get better, and a step up from the bottom is still an improvement worth pursuing.