Anorexia is very similar to bulimia. You can see the truth in the idea that anorexics are the ones who might have had bulimia but they are stronger than it; they care more, they work more. After all anorexics crave food too. They just less often get as far as ingesting it.
But the disorders are so different. Bulimia centres around the desire for food; anorexia centres around the exultation from not eating it. What are the other differences? The disorders are so very different from each other. They just show up with surface similarities and doctors and the general public think — oh, it’s all about weight, and food. But there are so many ways to deal with food. Food is omnipresent.
Bulimics as well as anorexics wish it could dissolve away so they didn’t have to deal with it.
And then bulimics think they are anorexics who don’t try hard enough, and then bulimics recognise themselves at the centre of this massive trope of bulimia, and they are it, and it fits and is the whole life as it’s lived at that moment, and it’s them. How could it ever be anything else?
It’s possible to be anorexic and bulimic at the same time. It’s the balancing of the thought patterns. ‘At the same time’ doesn’t need to mean at the same instant. One can be anorexic in the morning and bulimic by night. What dedication!
