Greatest Shame

Being bulimic is one thing, but a thief? I hate myself for it. And yet, my eating disorder led me down that path. I never stole from a store, but last year my roommate stored bags of candy under her bed and left them there, open. She rarely ate from the bags, too. I was so in awe of that- how could she not scarf down all that delicious candy waiting to slide gracefully down someone’s throat? It was just BEGGING for someone to eat it!

Anyway, seeing the candy there all the time tortured me, because I had such strong impulses to binge on it, and she wasn’t doing anything with it. I didn’t want to ask her to move it, because we weren’t friends, and I was sort of scared of interacting with her.

So, eventually, I was on a binge rampage and I tore through her candy.

“My bulimia made me do it!”

No, no it didn’t. I know it’s not right to steal from people. I wasn’t insane when I went through her bag of candy, I just didn’t care about her feelings.

I did replace all of her candy after the fact, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that I took it without permission. Besides, that’s not the only thing I stole.

I took money from my bf- about a dollar, but still.

I would skim the tops of left-over food taken home from restaurants and hope that no one would notice. Once I was opening the lid on a cookie jar and someone walked in on me. I spent the subsequent week hiding out in my room whenever I wasn’t away from the dorm.

And here’s the worst thing: I took discarded food from trash cans and gulped it down. I always felt disgusted with myself whenever I did that, but it didn’t stop me. Food was too important.

Because of these things, I felt continuously paranoid that someone in the dorm would catch on and think less of me. Thus, I spent the latter part of my freshman year consumed in terror at the thought of entering my own room, or sitting downstairs with other people in my dorm. It was not a good place to be.

I never accepted responsibility for what I did (except for the candy) and thankfully I will never have to. I think it would break me down and only make things worse, truthfully. This year, I’d like to think that I won’t steal other people’s food or rummage around in trash cans to satiate myself. 

Admitting what I used to do is one way to make sure it doesn’t happen again.