Right now ED is making me feel powerful. More calm. More in control. Less anxious; less emotional.

Warning: Purging and cutting TRIGGERS AHEAD. Read at your own risk!!!

I was really hungry as well as feeling weak, after hardly eating today (I was busy and didn't want to get up to get my planned food), so about half an hour ago I went upstairs and poured two HUGE bowls of Multigrain Cheerios with milk. Probably took me ten minutes to eat, tops. I then sat with it for a few minutes -- but then I realized that, since I'd satiated the craving, I no longer wanted the food in me. So to the bathroom I did go to purge. I got the majority of it up (though not all) and almost immediately felt so much better, about everything.

For me, purging can be such an emotional release. Fill yourself up -- stuff yourself to the brim -- feel your stomach full and heavy against you -- and then step into the bathroom and wash it all away. Walk out feeling cleansed. Walk out feeling like you've gotten some soul grime scrubbed from your pores. Feel like a better person -- a happier person, a more capable person, a more fulfilled person. That's what I get sometimes from purging. Sometimes it's robotic, but more often I wash away a good deal of passion and anxiety along with the food. Bulimic behaviors are truly the behaviors of someone who feels. Anoretic things -- restricting, compulsive exercise -- are a denial of feeling, to me. And for awhile I really liked that. But now, sometimes -- I feel. And so sometimes I have to get rid of how I feel.

I have the urge to cut, too, tonight. I have an almost never used, small utility knife that I favored the last time I did it. It would be such satisfaction to run it slowly across my upper arms -- see the blood well and then bead, maybe slide down my skin -- dab it with toilet paper, press in hard for several seconds to stop the bleeding. Feel the pain of the mattress against my newly injured skin when I lie down afterwards. Wake up the next morning with blood inside my shirt, maybe small bits on the pillow. Feel satisfied. Refreshed. New.

This is really why it's so hard to give up my self-destructive behaviors. They're so cathartic, sometimes; other times they're emotionally repressive, another thing I often strive for. These two benefits seem priceless to me, and I treasure them dearly. How can I possibly decide to give them up and then drop them just like that? I can't. It's completely impossible. Until I start to fix things in my head, I'll never be able to stop either of them for good, 100%. And, funny enough, that doesn't really scare me at all. I just keep thinking, "If something really bad happens, the hospital is always there." I mean, it's true. Twenty-minute drive away. Faster if I for some reason needed an ambulance. So I'm not really worried for my safety at all.

But should I be? Really?

I don't believe you.

And I won't let you take away the only tools I have to cope with life. I simply cannot.