I couldn’t eat for the rest of the day. Anytime I tried, I kept seeing that terrible eyeball. Was I hallucinating? Was my starvation finally coming to a head? Was I just really dehydrated? I chugged some water at the thought. I couldn’t decide if I should go to the hospital or what I’d even tell them if I did. Do I say I’m having some kind of mental break? Do I say I’m concerned about my ED? I was long past being afraid to bring it up with doctors and dentists… I’d been completely candid with all my healthcare providers for years. And anyway, fuckin dentists always know a bulimic when they see those slowly spreading tips of worn down enamel. Always. There is absolutely no fooling those weird mouth lovin motherfuckers. Sorry, getting off track. More on that another day.
Anyway, I considered calling around and admitting myself somewhere. Maybe it would be best to be hospitalized for a little while. Just to get some fluids and rest. But they would probably put on a feeding tube, and that feels violating in ways I would’ve never imagined before my first one. And unfortunately I’ve had several.
More than that, I didn’t want to be sent to the fuckin mental ward again. I hadn’t been to one in years, and I had hoped I’d never have to go back. I finally decided I would wait it out until the next morning and then try eating again. After all, it was probably just been a hallucination. I mean, that makes more sense than the alternative. My grasp on the reality I’d always known was crumbling, and it was easier to think it was just a malfunction in my brain. Even though that was still concerning as hell.
I barely slept that night. I went outside for cigarette after cigarette, tip toeing on the creaky floors to avoid waking our roommates. My stomach felt like it was trying to eat itself, the growls and rumbles now seeming almost animalistic. I chugged some water. Opened the fridge. Rummaged through, hoping something would seem appealing. Nothing did. Everything looked like that damn eyeball. Chugged some more water, which I ended up being unable to keep down. Luckily no mysterious solids came up with it. I finally managed to doze off for an hour or two before my husband’s alarm went off. I laid in bed until he left for work, then went out for yet another smoke.
It was early, and I wanted to sleep more, but I was feeling more physically empty than I’d ever felt. I decided maybe it would be best to try an Ensure. If anyone is wondering, Ensure is the bane of my existence. I keep some on stock at all times to avoid being hospitalized, but damn if I don’t fuckin hate those things. They remind me of every treatment center ever, those lovely little meal replacements for when we refuse solid food. You’d think that would deter me from refusing, but no. Let’s just say I’ve had a LOT of Ensure in my 32 years of life.
Suffice to say, I felt like vomiting an eyeball was emergent enough to warrant a bottle of the caloric vanilla-flavored grossness. I chugged and choked it down, gagging but managing to finish it all. Yet again, I couldn’t hold it down. And this time, when I vomited, up came what I can only assume was a piece of a tongue. It was just a thin strip, split at one end like a snake and uneven on the other end, appearing as if it had been torn off. It looked almost like it was starting to decay. It was a sickly grey, and it slid out of my throat and gagged me on it’s way out. I studied it for a moment, willing myself to reach out and feel if it was really there. I pulled out a glove from my medicine cabinet and picked it up.
If I was hallucinating, I definitely picked up something solid at the very least. I had never struggled with any kind of hallucinations, but I was almost hoping that’s what was going on. Still, I could’ve been holding a piece of fuckin beef jerky thinking it was a tongue for all I really knew. It was definitely one of my only safe foods. The thought made me feel incredibly foolish and mortified at my disgusting act, and I tossed the piece back into the toilet and quickly flushed it.
I decided to poke around in the medicine cabinet for a remedy to my hunger induced insomnia, and found some old antipsychotic sedatives from several years back. I remember I had stopped taking them after only a week because they made me feel like a zombie. I also remembered snorting them once (like the idiot junkie I was at the time) and passing out shortly after. Given my current predicament with involuntary vomiting, I decided to go that route.. I already felt like a zombie anyway, and I just wanted to pass out. It felt strange to do that again, after 3 years clean. It stung my nasal cavity and made my eyes water, and I nearly gagged from the drip. But I swallowed and closed my eyes, took several deep breaths, and held it down.
After about 15 minutes of mindlessly scrolling through reddit in an attempt to distract myself, I felt my eyes starting to get heavy. I fell asleep holding my phone, and didn’t wake until later that evening sometime after my husband, Travis, came home from work. He woke me by kissing me gently, saying that I should wake up so I’d be able to fall asleep that night. He assumed I took a nap. I checked my phone, still in my hand, and saw that I’d been sleeping for well over 8 hours.
Typically I’d be concerned and disappointed that I’d wasted my day off work, but instead I was grateful. My stomach grumbled and growled, and a deep pain had begun to radiate from within the empty pit. Travis noticed my audible hunger and told me dinner was ready, then left me to get dressed. I pulled on a sweatshirt and some leggings and hobbled into the kitchen. I passed by a mirror in the hall on my way, and winced as I caught a glimpse of my haggard reflection. I looked worse than I had in years, even in my worst of my eating disorder. I felt more pain blossoming in my belly as familiar feelings of anxiety and dread crept in. This was bad. Very bad. I couldn’t handle the thought of possibly needing to be hospitalized again. I wanted desperately to force down a meal, yet felt terrified that it would come up again.
When I sat down at the table, Travis looked at me with concern and asked if I was feeling alright. It was dark in our room when he woke me, so he hadn’t really seen my face. I answered with complete honesty that I wasn’t feeling well, and was very hungry but worried I might throw it up. He was reassuring, supportive; he sat closer to me and held me while I took a few bites. Finally the food looked like food, and my appetite came back for a moment. It was something he’d done through some of my worst moments, something that had gotten me through many unwanted meals. He would walk me to our bed and comfort me while I cried in pain from the overwhelming feeling of fullness, and he would lay there and hold me until I finally fell asleep.
That day was no different, and I had nearly fallen asleep again after some time in his arms. The pain in my stomach had mostly gone, and I felt my eyes getting heavy once more. I felt a deep sense of relief at having kept down at least a little food, and I began to drift off.
I was jolted awake with a sudden, intense pang of nausea, and I barely made it to the bathroom before I projectile vomited in the general direction of the toilet.
This time, some kind of tendril came up. Something that wasn’t humanoid in any way, shape, or form. And this time, I wasn’t the only one who saw it. Travis had run after me to help hold my hair back, and he freaked out as soon as he saw it hit the shallow bowl of water.
“What the fuck? What is that? Babe, are you ok?” He ran and embraced me as my vision blurred. I turned and looked at him with a combination of relief and fear; what I had seen was real. Slowly darkness seeped into my vision; I wobbled a bit then lost consciousness.
I awoke in the hospital 2 days later. As it turns out, I had esophageal varices and a severe sodium and potassium deficiency. Basically, my esophagus had some swollen veins that were bursting and bleeding into my stomach. Purging reaks havoc on the esophagus. And apparently, all the water I’d been chugging then puking had caused me to become dangerously low on sodium and potassium. The thing that Travis saw in the toilet was actually old blood, which can look like coffee grounds and/or have clots in it. I can only assume that whatever I saw and touched before was the same thing. I try not to think about it.
While I know now that I didn’t physically vomit bits of monster, I still believe that I have a monster inside me. Me listening to it is what caused this whole thing. I’ve noticed however, over the last few years, that it’s gotten more and more quiet. I hear it sometimes, whispering about how much I loved it, how I must miss it. How easy it would be to fall back in and sink again, into the cool, dark comfort of the pit.
Then I think of how close I was to death, how satisfied the monster was that I was fully willing to fade away. It wasn’t easy, it was fucking hard. It was exhausting and empty and dreadful. So I keep moving forward. I continue to go forward and believe that I can keep the monster at bay.
And you can, too.