Bone Dry

I don’t normally add trigger warnings. I’ve never believed most people are truly “triggered,” at least not in the way the internet frames it. If the mere mention of death or abuse can undo you, then surely the warning itself—announcing those very words—would undo you too.

So why include one this time?

I’m not entirely sure. It feels different. Heavier. More shameful.

Death, after all, is just a fact of life. And when it comes to abuse—most people already know my biological father was a child molester. I don’t carry shame around that; that’s his burden.

Maybe I give a trigger warning because this time, I want to give people the choice to look away. When I talk about death or abuse, I want them to stare and acknowledge it.

But this—bulimia—has been mine alone since I was fourteen.

So: trigger warning. 

The last time I purged was two years ago. I hadn’t planned to stop—not in any ceremonial way—but I was tired, and had been “trying to stop” for months. In the first year after we moved here, purging was just part of my daily life. Like waking up. Feeding the cats. Getting dressed.

I remember the last purge only because of what I’d been watching: Prey, the newer film in the Predator franchise. Nothing about the purge itself stands out. Many others were more notable like when I tried to make myself throw up while I had COVID. That was a low point—still wince-worthy years later. There are many others that qualify.

Bulimia came and went in waves for me, the same way cigarettes did. I finally quit smoking the way some people fall out of love: suddenly, without warning. One day, on my thirty-minute drive home, I lit a cigarette out of habit. Halfway through, I realized I hadn’t taken a single puff. I tossed it out the window and never picked one up again. No coincidence I was going through a divorce then. Pressure pushes some things out; it rinses other things clean.

Though lately—over the past month or so—I’ve been chewing a piece of nicotine gum once or twice a week. I can’t fully explain why. Maybe it started when my husband stocked up after saying nicotine “helps with depression.” I don’t believe that, but I like the feeling of a fake vice—the ritual without all the ruin.

My good friend’s father once claimed we crave nicotine because it “converts to vitamin B in the blood.” It doesn’t. Nicotine merely resembles niacin—Vitamin B3—in chemical structure. But diamonds and the fizz in soda are both carbon, and no one mistakes them for the same thing.

I call her my good friend, not my best friend, because when I was twenty-one and my best friend died, I quietly retired the term. Some concepts die with the person. Yet she is, for all practical purposes, my best friend. She knows the deepest, darkest parts of me. We talk almost every day. She’s the person I reach for—whether I’m hurting or happy.

She was the one who comforted me when bulimia became an everyday occurrence.

“My therapist says we’re like oranges,” she told me. “When we’re squeezed, the same thing will always come out. Orange juice, not lemonade. Not apple juice. Under pressure, an orange always produces orange juice. This is just what comes out of you when life gets hard.”

That metaphor settled over me like a soft blanket. I was under immense pressure then. Honestly, I’ve been under pressure for most of my life—at least since fourteen, if we’re measuring by vomit. Purging was simply the juice I produced—one of many.

But I haven’t purged in two years.

I haven’t smoked in nine.

I haven’t drunk alcohol in fourteen.

And there’s a long list of other self-destructive habits I’ve abandoned along the way.

So as much as I sometimes worry that I’m failing, or stagnating, or quietly collapsing, the truth is I’m probably doing alright. I haven’t been under real pressure lately, because nothing harmful is leaking out.

If I were squeezed today, what would come out?

It’s an unsettling question.

Maybe we won’t find out.

Maybe I’m fine.

Maybe I’m bone dry now.

Maybe it would just come out as obsessive writing.

(Oops, that last line seems a little too self-aware.)

This morning, I remembered the years when I supervised a group of 18- to 25-year-olds at work—"kids" who saw me as grounded, dependable, someone worth seeking guidance from. A bona fide professional adult.

We’d sit across from each other over lunch, discussing their résumés, their futures, their lives.

“Can you look over my résumé and cover letter?”

“Of course—just after I wash my hands and my face, brush my teeth, comb my hair, spritz some perfume, and hit this stain with a Tide-to-Go pen real quick.”

To them, I must have seemed composed. Organized. Prepared. Sat at the table worried about their own little stain or onion breath. Wondered when they could be more like me.

In reality, I was ducking into the bathroom to vomit and then conceal the evidence. Or—as I insisted to them—freshen up.

Life is all about point of view.

Like how I kept full-size candy bars in my desk drawer. Everyone knew that on a bad day, they could count on me for a sweet pick-me-up. That was also my binge drawer. A memory that feels wholesome to them is, for me, a small private ache.

If I died, that drawer would be the kind of thing people would reminisce about.

“She was so kind! She always had a chocolate bar ready!”

Sorry, kids—I guess I’ll carry the real story to the grave.

Not to be morbid, but death is simply a fact of life. I will die someday—but not anytime soon.

Recently a kid—well, she’s nearly thirty now, but I still think of her as "a kid"—one of my former employees reached out.

“Would you be my reference? Could you review my cover letter and résumé?”

Of course. I’m happy to help. I don’t have a candy drawer anymore, but I still have that part of myself to offer. I can still play professional. I might even really be one now. Who knows?

Things truly haven’t been that bad lately.

After all, nothing is spilling out.

Recovery, I’ve learned, is dry. So dry, you might fear your life is a desert.

But anything feels like a desert when you were drowning most of your life.