She Had Small Hands, Thank God
On a summer afternoon in 2009, in a private consulting suite, sunshine streamed through haphazardly open blinds. It poured across the carpet and onto my jeans, which fit snugly a month earlier but had become far too large for me.
“You’ve lost a lot of weight,” my endocrinologist said. “What have you been doing?”
“My reflux is still pretty bad. I really can’t hold down my food after I take the pill. Otherwise I’m just following the diet plan.”
“That happens with the pill sometimes. Try taking it at a different time. You’re not vomiting on purpose, are you?”
“No.”
The conversation then turned elsewhere. The question he uttered, along with the total lack of follow-up, was the closest anyone ever came to asking me about my bulimia.
It should have been obvious to anyone that I was bulimic, but people don’t like to talk about it. They especially don’t like to talk about it if the bulimic person is overweight — it’s almost like we’re not real.
I knew how to hide it. I didn’t want anyone to know. I wasn’t following anyone’s diet plan or archaic ideas. I’d been starving myself for months.
