SINGING FOR JOY!

This international pop singer, a chronic, daily bulimic for 7 years, experienced immediate release the first day of contact with Be Totally Free! In this letter sent to her new Be Totally Free! friends, she chronicles her transformation, and amazement at this miracle.

I like to think and put down in words how these gifts I have been given have changed everything.

It is now 6 days since I met all of you, and I am trying to grasp the fact that I am not dreaming. Believing what has happened to me would be like believing a bald guy saying he woke up the next morning with hair growing down to his ankles. I know now something that only belonged to the fairy tales.

I remember the first woman from Be Totally Free! telling me her story before I met the rest of you who came to share your experiences with me. It was very comforting to hear someone express how she felt and lived in such an open and free manner, things that I was feeling but did not dare admitting to anyone, hardly to myself. I felt so hopeless that I did not dare to admit the hopelessness. I thought the world would give up on me and hate me for being so hopeless. She told me about her instant release from the bulimia, but to my heart and mind this was so incomprehensible that I did not take it in. I heard it, but to relate to it was impossible. No one has told me that this can happen in life; it is like bringing someone back from the dead. That was how impossible I thought it was for me to battle the bulimia.

Up until now I have tried everything and one of the things I have realized is that the more help through various assistance and advice I would get, the worse and more explosive the eating disorder would grow. I was shameful about the fact that I could not learn to battle the disorder and I was shameful about the lack of control, and I wanted to give people bothering to try to help me the feeling that it worked. It did not. I was a bad case. For the past 6 years my main activity has been bingeing and purging. Nothing worked and I begged my father who is a doctor to assist me in being put to sleep in a respirator for a few days so that my body could get some rest. After being with me for a while he understood that this was not an insane request, but it could not be done because of the ethics of such an action. Instead I continued using tranquilizers, sleep was the only thing that could control me; not my own sleep, it was not strong enough, but the sleep induced by sleeping pills. I would take one dose immediately after finishing up the first binge and purge so to get as much possible rest before the next one would start. I was also on antidepressants most of the past 6 years. The illness became unbearable, and the depression strangled me together with the anxiety and fear of people. I had only food. I used the food, and the food took over and dictated me. I wanted to die. I did not want to experience more of this life and I saw no hope to find another since I had no power to control my urges. I grew severely depressed, and had a few stays at the mental hospital because of depression.

After the two stays for my depression I went in a mental hospital with a program for bulimics and at my arrival I told my therapists what I had been thinking and made my mind up about; that if this program does not work I will end my life. This was a decision made not out of depression but awareness over my hopeless position. I could not be treated. The other patients resented me for my total lack of control and everyday multiple overeatings. At the hospital I tried harder to control it since I was resented by the others, and I thought gaining control was what I should do, but thought I must be too bad a person because I did not want to stop strongly enough. At the meal times I begged the staff to assist me to keep me from overeating so as to spare the other girls from my behavior, and I ended up getting my own room at meal times.

I did get a little better after the hospital stay, not from the treatment, but from doing two books that had some impact on me, A Course in Miracles and the Artist’s Way. I attempted to clean out some disbeliefs but did not know that I had to fill the empty space up with a kind of love that I just now got to know. I was proud that I had gone down from 80-90 overeatings a month to 50. I had defensively insisted in my incapability to learn control skills in the hospital and wanted more therapy. Deep down I thought that I insisted on this because I was too lazy and bad to want to get well. I did not get understanding for my point about focusing on gaining control over the overeating, and so started triumphing a little after the hospital stay when I was the only one of the girls that did not have an increase in overeatings afterwards. I thought I had found the way. Very soon the despair and hopelessness came back. And lately the thoughts of death came back, stronger and stronger (two of my siblings have already committed suicide.)

I can’t work, and I was lucky to get permanent disability insurance because of my condition. There was a lot of time for me to use. I spent every waking hour for the past 5 years in trying to understand my self and continue the therapy sessions that I go to get twice a week. I tried to always be aware of my feelings and constantly tried to dig into my past. I read books and I wanted to walk around in life as a constant self-therapist with the support of what I learned from my two professional therapists and A Course in Miracles. I did not get better, the depression did not leave me, and I was on the lookout for better antidepressants. I have tried them all.

Some months ago a doctor told me that the bulimia was affecting my vocal chords, eroding them away, and I got terrified because singing was my only pleasure and my only hope of getting some kind of happiness or money into my life. I got worse realizing that my vocal chords were in serious jeopardy of decay. I tried to remember that I was assisting in the demolition of my voice, so to come to my senses and stop, but it only worked the other way. I had to eat to push my panic away.

Then last Sunday, I was told I was given relief of the eating disorder. I was also told that I had to get rid of a lot of disbelief and garbage, and I felt that I was in the right hands here because I also believe that one has to resolve the underlying things, not attack and control the symptom like most people think would be the way. However, I did not believe that this thing that had been controlling me completely for the past 6 years, and even more than that, could be taken away. I could not give it away. I thought...

I woke up the next morning after a night of shallow and weird sleep, nervous, and reluctant about waking up, wanting to dream a little bit more that it was true. I wanted to try to imagine it to be true, but I could not do that to myself, I was not up for "screwing" with my mind like that, and I felt at least a little good because I had met some people that I felt knew what I was going through. The memory of each of the faces that had been surrounding me the previous evening was like glued to my mind and remembering it would somehow and, strangely at that time, make me feel calm. I hoped that this feeling of being understood and being surrounded with smiles and faces as warm as this could make the eating disorder ease a little up on me, if for only the beginning of that day. I tell ya’ it sure did! It was gone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It still is. That morning another miracle happened. I started listening to my heart and it was telling me not to continue taking the usual dose of antidepressants. I did not need it and it just felt wrong and weird to continue.

Along with the miracle of my obsession with food being gone, other things started happening. I HAD to find out how this could happen, how on earth I had been released from my hell. My heart felt different, and I got to understand from the growing feeling in my heart that the promise about love that I have never believed in was really true. I was not even able to comprehend what I did not believe in. I thought those stories were only symbolic. Love had healed me and love was planted in me, something that I knew was the best thing I had ever known, and the only thing I wanted to feel.

I used to think that being free from bulimia meant being strong enough to not go for the temptation of overeating and being strong enough to turn down people if they would offer me a cookie. I never imagined I could ever NOT want. I thought it meant that I would be able to have one bite of a chocolate without going wild about having another and another. But I see now that being free means being free to do what does not hurt me. I never understood that there is such a perfect manifestation of my inner problems in the food I want and eat. I thought all these years that I am just unlucky being equipped with a huge appetite for any kind of food. No, I was wrong, I had a huge appetite for real life and real love and was looking for it in food. I realize this now, and am eating well, and being turned off by the thought of mayonnaise and chocolate. I have tried to tempt myself with the thought of food to see how close I would be to an eating episode, but this method is actually working the other way. It shows me how much I used to hurt myself, because eating all of that food that I used to would now make me feel like I was taking a hammer and hitting myself in the head with it. That is not tempting...

Only 6 days have past, but my whole life has changed. My heart is talking to me and my everyday mess is shrinking. I can’t hurt myself with amounts of food, bad food, or even cigarettes, which blew my mind too. I cannot hurt myself with seeing people I don’t feel good with, or have conversations with people around me like I used to, trying to be liked, trying to accommodate.

I feel a smile on my face and see a smile on so many peoples faces everywhere I go. I feel genuinely deeply happy, and I have so much faith and beautiful feelings about "come what may." I have been blessed and know I have to respect the blessing and myself and not be tempted by fear to hurt myself again. I have a lot of strength to gain, but this strength needs no pain to be gained. I am so committed to love and thank God for letting me be committed. This is all I want.