I Don't Deserve this Disease

Something I’ve always felt during the bout of my bulimia is that I don’t deserve this disease. Not in the sense that I’m a good person and I don’t deserve to throw up my food all the time and cry over not losing a few pounds, but in the sense that I don’t deserve the attention I give to it, or the attention it’s been getting me from others, or the feeling that I’m special because of it, or the feeling that I do have a very serious problem. I don’t think I deserve to have those feelings because in my mind, my life is great, aside from the bulimia. I have great parents who are still together, great siblings, a few close friends on whom I can count, an amazing boyfriend, enough money to get by, I’m not obese, I’m healthy, and I’m going to a great school equipped with a reasonable set of smarts. WHAT DO I HAVE TO COMPLAIN ABOUT?? Where did my bulimia come from??? I don’t have any problems, so why am I reacting as if I do?

Admitting that I need help and going to treatment don’t do anything for these sentiments either. I don’t feel like I deserve treatment because my life is good and compared to some my behavior isn’t so severe. This makes me feel like I have to be more deserving, which means my illness has to be more severe, which gives me more motivation to binge and purge, even though the treatment is supposed to have the opposite effect.

I also feel guilty whenever I try to talk about this with my boyfriend or my friend that knows I have bulimia. I feel selfish for always being concerned with my disease and for needing help with it when the rest of my life is so perfect. I would like to talk about it more with Robert and more with these people I’m seeing, but I can’t. I can only mention it every few days, and when I do the conversation does not last more than a few minutes.

I know that I’m well off, and I don’t want to burden anyone else with my problems. I don’t want to be or seem selfish, or self-centered, or absorbed in my problems….