and then she purged...

Been emotional all night then I felt like crap because my school reunion is coming up in a few months. Friends from shool have finished their 4 year degrees or are in grad schoool or have kids or are even living out of the country.


I have nothing. In 5 years I have nothing toshow but a half finished degree and an ed and a drug past.

So despite telling myself not to, and not purging for weeks... i did it. I purged until I coldn't anymore. If I can't have something to show for myself then I will be the skinniest girl ther..or rather as skinny as i can be. Fuck recovery, I have nothing to recover for.

(((hugs))) I didn't bother with my 5 year. I figured no one had really grown up any - our ten year pretty much confirmed that most of them hadn't grown up by then either.

I know where you're coming from though - at 5 years I wasn't done with school either. I'd actually been kicked out at one point for bad grades (yay for booze, pot and starving! ), but was back in and doing well. I was still scary skinny, and with all the family drama going on, I just didn't want to deal with the reunion too. I was in contact with the people who were important to me and that was enough.

Go if that's what you WANT, but please don't feel you have to, or that you have anything to prove. I know it feels like everyone has changed in huge ways, but they really haven't. Not yet. Even at 10 years you'll be surprised how little has changed. Good grief, at our 15 yr, the volleyball team was shotgunning beers and getting high - same old, same old, lol. The rest of us had mellowed out a bit by then though - that was a fun reunion. Much better than the 10yr for sure.

You are ONLY five years out - that's not a lot of time - and you will go on to do amazing things and have fab adventures. Knowing everything I know now, I'm glad I didn't get married and have kids right away. I'm glad I had some time away from school to rethink things and change my major so I could do what *I* wanted to do. I'm glad I moved away from all of them.

I think 5 yr reunions are a bad idea - it's not enough time away to become who you're going to be. It catches you in-process and makes everyone feel insecure. The ones who *think* they're all that are going to find out - in a few years - that they weren't.

Please be gentle with yourself Sami. You have a lot of great years coming up, and you'll take what you learned in the last five to better shape them. We are always growing, changing and evolving - don't let one party make you feel that you aren't doing it "right." We all have our own paths, and I think, down the road, we're better for it. If my path had been different, I wouldn't have my husband or my child - they're my everything, and worth all that I went through to get here.

/resident old lady rant

I echo everything Elsa said. You really don't have to go. Do you still talk to anyone from school? If so, they're the people to worry about because they're still in your life. If people were important or their opinions mattered, they'd still be part of your life. I used to get concerned about stuff like that. I would look and think everyone I went to school with was doing so well because they were in college and having so much fun, whilst I was kicked out of home, unemployed and in an abusive relationship. Now I look 8 years on, and I wouldn't swap my life with 90% of them. School reunions are just for people to show off and make out like their lives are so perfect. They're not. It's all a charade. I think you have done so much with your life. Just look at everything you have achieved.

It's okay that you purged. Well, it's not okay, but it's happened. You can't change it. You just have to understand why you did it and think of a safer way to express your emotions in the future. If you look at some DBT material, there's a lot of good activities they list to do instead of SI so I think you could use the same techniques for purging too. I can look for my handout for you if you want?

Don't let this set you back. You've been doing so well. You're over a week binge free, you're eating really well, you're losing weight every day. Look at all the clothes you're wearing now that you couldn't wear a few months back. That's real progress. Look after yourself babe, it's not worth doing this to yourself. You don't deserve it