control

The next two years are somewhat a blur in my memory.  At some point, though I don't know when, I started eating again.  It was never alot, but I wasn't completely starving myself either. It was somewhere near the end of my junior year of highschool when things got ugly again.  I started dating boys who were only interested in my body.  I had been sexually assaulted by a friend earlier that year and at that point began to discover the numbing grace of alcohol.

Between the asault, the alcohol use and the boys who cared only about how I could make them feel good, I started to feel my life rapidly spinning out of control.  That is when food, or rather the lack thereof, re-entered the picture in a bigger way.  I felt that I had no control in my life at all.  One day, I didn't eat, simply because I didn't feel like it.  I got hungry but I could tell my body no.  Anorexia grabbed a hold of me again with a stronger grip than the first time. 

The first time was about attention, needing it.  The second time was about control, also needing it.  I got such an adrenaline filled power rush when I realized that while nothing else in my life could be controlled, I could control my food.  I never ate because my body was weak and demanding food.  I ate because I wanted to.  The more things spiraled, the more control I exerted.  I didn't care at all about my body image at this point, only about controlling my body.  Because it wasn't about image but rather about control,  when I did eat I piled on the calories.  I didn't want anyone to become suspicious about my rapid weight loss and thus rob me of this new found power, so when I did eat, it was cinnamon rolls and milk shakes.

Again, no one really noticed, but I'm not entirely sure how I got away with it the second time around.  Somehow I managed to keep it from my parents and the couple of close friends I had.  And I'm sure no one else noticed because I was careful to cover up my figure so that it wasn't obvious that I had lost weight again.  I obsessed over my new found control and the rush I got from it.