Toothbrush
When I was in
eighth and ninth grade, I had two toothbrushes. One I used to brush my teeth,
and the other I found one day buried under empty cans of shaving cream and
broken combs in a drawer of the guest bathroom. I took it to my room and hid it
in the cupboard under my sink, tucked safely in a clear plastic cup I had
gotten from the Ordway Theater. I threw the toothbrush away a little while ago
because I couldn’t bear to look at it anymore. Which in retrospect is pretty stupid.
It was just a toothbrush. It was a faded blue color and had some split and
broken bristles. It was the really cheap kind that you buy at a Super America
in Wisconsin because you forgot to pack one in your suitcase when you were
going up to your cabin in Minong for Fourth of July weekend.
After several months of struggling
not to use it anymore, I finally took it down to the big brown trashcan in the
garage one night. The concrete floor was freezing because I hadn’t bothered to
put any shoes on. I was cold and I usually hated being in the garage alone,
especially at night. Who knows what psycho rapist clowns could be lurking
behind my father’s old recumbent bike and the giant plastic snowman we put on
the porch for Christmastime? Nevertheless, that moment, throwing the toothbrush
away, was one of the biggest reliefs of my life. Because for nearly a year,
that toothbrush was the representation of a lifetime of self-loathing.
The first time I used the toothbrush was in May of 2010. It was getting
very warm, and all the girls at my school were doing this thing where they
would tie their shirts above their midriffs at recess. Even my friends, who
were certainly not the preppy blonde tennis players that St Paul Academy was
known for, were lifting their t-shirts over their belly buttons and tanning on
the big grassy hill overlooking the football field. I had always been very
self-conscious in middle school. I felt out of place next to the stick thin
girls with their spray tans and blonde highlights and butt-hugging
short-shorts. So when this belly-bearing trend spread among the eighth graders,
I was suddenly overcome with powerful anxiety. If I didn’t do it, I would look
like a baby in my knee-length Capri pants and long-sleeved Old Navy shirt. But
if I did join them, I would no doubt be even more mortified. Everyone would see
my jiggling baby belly protruding over the waistline of my jeans. The
insecurity built and built, until suddenly, I had stopped eating. This kept me
going for a while, until the pressure to be perfect had completely taken my
mind over. I felt like the action I was taking wasn’t providing the immediate
results I needed. That’s when I got the toothbrush.
Finding that I
didn’t have enough courage to stick my finger down my throat, I opted to use an
implement to ease up the task. A toothbrush seemed like the most logical and
least messy option. I waited until after dinner that night, to make sure I had
accumulated enough food to expel a decent amount from my system. When I had
made sure both my parents were downstairs and therefore out of earshot, I went
up to my room and turned on my radio full blast as an extra precaution. Then I
entered my bathroom, a small room I could enter from my bedroom, and knelt down
awkwardly on the floor mat in front of the toilet. It felt strange, like I was
getting down to pray. I had prayed a few times before, but always about silly
things, like getting the big part in a play or acing a test the next day. I was
never big on religion. So doing this felt different, solemn. I carefully
inserted the toothbrush into my mouth, butt end first, and committed my first
purge, the first of many to come.
After I had finished, I rinsed the toothbrush off and hid it away. I
flushed the evidence of what I had done and washed my mouth out with tap water
from a Dixie cup. It was all a very organized ceremony, very step-by-step. I
felt a lot better afterwards and slept soundly that night. After a few weeks of
doing this, I had lost some weight and felt comfortable tying my shirt up with
the other girls. I felt like I had found a solution to everything.
Of course, it wasn’t a sustainable
system. The crying jags, drastic weight fluctuations and long periods of
depression and guilt that followed should have been enough of an indicator that
what I was doing was wrong. But I kept doing it, through the summer and well
into the next year. The occasions became less frequent, once or twice a month
instead of every day, as my hair had begun falling out along with other
unpleasant symptoms. I told my parents in the winter; mostly because I had
already told my friends and they pressured me into it. They took me to therapy,
which was generally ineffective. I lied and said that it was so effective that
I never felt the need to vomit anymore. I did though, saving it for special
occasions; bad days and periods and the like. I wasn’t cured, and the
toothbrush remained in my cupboard.
By the summer of 2011, the purging had faded to
an infrequent handful of occasions. I felt like that was good enough. As long
as it kept me thin when I needed it, I accepted it as a perfectly healthy
lifestyle. People throw up, I reasoned. Why should it make a difference if I
just do it on purpose sometimes? I had gotten loads of support from my friends,
and I was in what I thought was a pretty good place. But one night, I was at
the wedding of my cousin Christopher and everything fell apart.
I had been
having a really good night. I had been eating pretty normally, only limiting
myself a bit, and enjoying myself at the reception, dancing like an idiot with
my aunts and cousins. I was, however, sick with a slight cough. I went to the
bathroom and had a minor coughing fit on the toilet, then came out,
unsuspecting and content. The next day, my mother told me that my cousin
Cassie’s girlfriend had heard me vomiting at the wedding and that she was going
to take me to the Emily Program to get help. I was hysteric and furious. Out of
all the times I had thrown up without my parents knowing, they pick the one
misunderstanding to take drastic action? I tried desperately to explain it to
them, and I could tell that they wanted to believe me, but to be fair, there
was a lot of proof against me.
I was taken to the Emily Program
the next day and something amazing happened. For the first time ever, I was
completely honest about what had been happening to me. I felt like there was no
need to lie about it this time, and frankly, I was tired of hiding it. The
therapists I talked to actually listened to me and believed what I was saying.
I didn’t feel like I needed to pretend I was happy. I realized how unhappy I
had actually been this past year. And for the first time, I truly believed that
maybe, just maybe, I could get rid of this habit completely.
It didn’t happen instantly. I went through
several months of anxiety attacks, relapses and near relapses and prescribed
medication. But I got better. The purging became inconstant, then very rare,
and finally, in an unceremonious way, stopped for good. I haven’t knelt over my
toilet since November. The feelings are still there, of course. There are times
when I feel fat and ugly and worthless. But it’s better than feeling like that
all the time. I don’t think I’m going to go anywhere but up from where I am
now. I have amazing friends and a beautiful house. I have an excellent father
and a wonderful mother and a sister and dog that love me and my own room and a
closet full of pretty dresses and only one toothbrush.
