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Bulimia is linked, in my life, to periods of intense passion, passion of all kinds, but most specifically emotional passion. Bulimia acknowledges the body explicitly, violently. It attacks the body, but it does not deny. It is an act of disgust and of need. This disgust and this need are about both the body and the emotions. The bulimic finds herself in excess, too emotional, too passionate. This sense of excess is pinned to the body. The body bears the blame but is not the primary problem. There is a sense of hopelessness in the bulimic, a well-fuck-it-all-then, I might as well binge. This is a dangerous statement, but the bulimic impulse is more realistic than the anorexic because, for all its horrible nihilism, it understands the body is inescapable.

The anoretic operates under the astounding illusion that she can escape the flesh, and, by association, the realm of emotions. The summer before I left for boarding school was the last time I would ever fully understand that I was a human being, and occasionally care about myself as such. I was about to become an anoretic. That is to say, I, the girl I knew as myself, was about to disappear. She was about to become no more than the blank space in the mirror where my body had once been. She was about to become no more than a very small voice.

However people know things about themselves, through premonitions or suspicions or specific plans, I knew this. And I was afraid. Yet I wanted it more than anything.