After almost 19 years of every day bulimia, I stumbled into recovery. It hit me and was way stronger and bigger than the bulimia and I did not expect it at all. I certainly did not expect it to last. But it did, it stuck.
This is how it happened:
I was on an airplane, returning from New Delhi where I had spent two weeks in a factory, designing my new collection. The night before I left, I looked at the samples I was about to bring back to my business partners and knew with certainty, that each one of those dresses and tops I had worked so hard on weren't good and would certainly be rejected and ridiculed by my nasty French business partners. After I packed the ill-fated samples and my belongings, I called and ordered room service.
The cart with covered dishes arrived complete with a set of four plates, and I signed the check, made out to my room that was paid by my partners.
"Where is your company?" the polite and quite attractive waiter asked as he laid out the feast.
"They are on their way" I smiled. "Leave the covers on to keep it warm, they are delayed by an accident on the main road."
"As you wish, mam" the waiter smiled back and handed me the room-bill to sign.
"Would you like me to keep you company until they arrive?" he winked.
"No, no, it's quite all right. They'll be here any moment" I flirted back.
He finally left and I sat down to my lonely dinner, not even bothering to get to the bathroom a few feet away to throw up. I used the flimsy wastebasket instead.
My fear and apprehension about the ill-fated samples in my suitcase stuck to my brain like the sticky mango-rice I'd jut eaten.
I woke up bloated, fat, tired and depressed.
I did not know this then, but for reasons that I still don't understand, this hotel orgy was to be my last binge.
On the airplane, I asked the stewardess to remove my tray after a few bites. I snaked my way through a crowded aisle to the dirty lavatory and before I could bend over to relieve myself of the few bites I had eaten, a vision of an enormous, old-fashioned, picturesque scale appeared. The scale was loaded with grains on both sides in perfect balance. It stopped me cold. In a vividly bright and eerily colorful vision, I imagined how my self-destructive action would cause the scale to tip over, causing a horrible earthquake, floods and worldwide destruction.
The precarious balance of our earth, already tipping toward irreversible damage and death was just one grain away from total annihilation, and adding that one grain, that one self-destructive action would be my fault. Shivers ran down my spine. A wave of diarrhea gripped my body and I sat there for what seemed like hours, wracked with cramps and fear.
Even though, nobody on earth would know about what I did behind the locked bathroom door, the scale of love and death would.
"It's the things we do when nobody is looking that count the most." I had read this sentence that same morning in my meditation book -- not for the first time -- but suddenly it sunk in. What I do behind closed doors counts. More than what I do in public, when I pretend to be that perfectly skinny and hard-working woman, who never allows anybody entrance into my secret and shameful reality.
This moment was the end of my double life. The end of my self-serving belief that every addict carries like a shield to justify the harm they cause: "I'm only hurting myself, so leave me alone." I had always hurt the people around me and most of all, my daughter, who learned from me that food was a drug. No matter what I told her about healthy eating, what she witnessed about the way I ate had turned her into a chubby teenager. She suffered the consequences of my example in a way that still brings tears to my eyes.
I returned to me seat. For the first time in 19 years, I had left a toilet without vomiting. A sense of peace and calm enveloped me and I joined a conversation between a professor of art and a women who had just gone through a serious cleansing process in one of the many ashrams in the south of India. The conversation and my ability to take part in it exhilarated me and made me feel like a worthy part of the human race. Instead of sinking into one of my magazines or books, while sneaking food into my mouth, I participated and cared about others.
When I arrived in Los Angeles, I stepped into a limousine that my wealthy boyfriend (and almost husband) had arranged for me. I was tired, as one should be after a 24-hour flight, but at the same time, I was awake and excited. I had finally achieved what I had wished for so desperately for so many years.
As I had expected, my partners in our fashion company rolled their eyes when I presented them with my work. I excused myself, claiming extreme fatigue from traveling and drove home to the apartment I had rented. I took a much-needed shower and unpacked my suitcases. Then I drove to my future husband's mansion in Mt. Washington.
I called my business partners and said, "I don't want to do this anymore. I quit." Now I was without a job and that scared me. But I was done with the bulimia.
I spent the next few days with my almost-husband. I ate very little and never once threw up. We got along and were in love like we were a long time ago. I attributed this to my sudden honesty and lack of secrecy. I was myself, vulnerable and totally open, without the veil that I had pulled up between us. Everything was beautiful and honest in the way we treated each other -- at least during those first few, almost magical days.
If I had known how difficult and painful my new state of realness would soon turn out, I'm not sure I'd been able to live though this.
"Who am I?" I wondered when I went for hours of walks with him and the dog, instead of staying behind to rid myself of the lovely meals I cooked for us.
"Who are you?" he asked soon enough himself, when I started to voice opinions and questions I had not dared to speak of.
"I don't recognize you anymore", he complained when my new personality surfaced. "What happened to you in India?" he wondered. "You are so different, I don't recognize you anymore."
Neither did I. something had shifted and would never be the same again.