Purgatory, Probably
Content warning: This piece includes discussions of eating disorders and emetophobia. Resources can be found at the bottom of the piece.
Courtesy of William Blake. “Dante and Virgil Approaching the Angel Who Guards the Entrance of Purgatory” (1824-7).
I never understood spirituality before these patterns began to feel less like predictable behaviors and more like a dissociative frenzy in which my mind and body are at war.
Spirituality is letting go of certainty, but I’m sure of quite a few things: that if I eat more than two meals a day, my body will expand like a bullfrog. That if I satisfy my cravings in the middle of the night, I will inevitably stuff myself to the point with the comforting knowledge that I can just throw it all up. And, when I do throw everything up, I am sure that I’ll have learned my lesson that time, and will tighten the oppressive reins of my dietary regime.
No, I’m certain!
I’ll count my calories like I promised myself. I will deny myself certain treats that I know will just occupy my stomach as well as my mind; this kind of thinking makes my imagination more potent. I’ll give it that. In my occupied mind, my stomach becomes a micro-purgatory. An unwelcome and barren hollow for the guilty intakes of a binge.
Guilty. There is no nourishment here, not even a glimmer of hope for redemption. These forbidden indulgences will be destined to a dismal fate, wherein they fail to become sustenance and instead must pay the price of impulsivity. And I find myself repulsed by them. Repulsed by myself, really, but to blame something else is a nice distraction from the shame that inescapably proceeds from the private privilege of a binge.
Binging is an intimately visceral experience, one that transports me initially to a false reality in which my behaviors have no consequences. Calories? Pfft. A day spent meticulously scheduling my meals and rationing portions is—in my mind, which tends toward polarization—wasted on this sinful temptation. But oh, how scandalous! How otherworldly this experience can be! I realize I’m using religious imagery throughout this essay, but how could I not, when the consequences of such pleasure can be quickly and privately purged by two fingers?
What a blessing to be able to atone for my lust, my gluttony (no, it is gluttony, really. Totally not my body demanding nutrients). This is the life I have chosen, I suppose, not one of moderation, but of the pursuit of perfection. Like those who endeavor to achieve it, perfection is stubborn: it is a hurdle that perpetually grows higher to ensure impossibility. We know this. You’re beautiful just the way you are! Nobody’s perfect (my mom lovingly yet somewhat fruitlessly preaches to me)! Well, I damn well try, right? The loneliness—the emptiness—that serves as a loyal convoy to the pursuit of perfection explains to you with presidential rhetoric that you are different from the rest, and what you choose to consume in front of others should reflect that.
Yeah, that’s why I order the scantily clad salad with no protein in sight at a restaurant while you, you GORMANDIZER, eat a steak sandwich (and fries? Mind if I have one? Or two?) for dinner. I don’t do moderation, because I’m able—unlike you—to eat with reserve and shame.
That’s my trick, you see. Deny, deny, deny.
However, at precisely 11:48 PM tonight, I’m going to scarf down three store-bought, nearly flavorless cinnamon rolls, a frosted gingerbread man cookie missing a foot, some handfuls of pasta (binging is too immediate, too frantic, an activity for utensils), and whatever Christmas cookies are left in the desolate carnage that is my family’s post-holiday refrigerator. But don’t you worry, I’ll redeem myself at the altar soon after this sinful rampage. I’ll bend forward to stare down at the toilet whose innocent bowl will soon be decorated with a Jackson-Pollock-esque abstraction of browns and greens and pinks and overwhelmingly acidic remnants of Guilt. I choke, I heave, my lower back aches. I feel content with the mess I’ve made; it looks and smells wretched, like I’ve really accomplished something here.
The process is difficult, but the more unpleasant, the better. And, like my stomach after what I view as a successful purge, I feel empty: perhaps it’s the brain fog with which my body responds to this strenuous physical labor, but I choose to prioritize the short-term relief from a binge over the long-term effects of self-inflicted physical deterioration.
Empty! Hollow! Of sustenance, of thought.
But I go to sleep soundly. This process is liberating and exhausting, and I’ve earned my rest. My stomach gently groans, and the clouds occupying my brain eventually evaporate to make room for dreams. It’s funny how my nighttime atonement makes for morning dissatisfaction. Redemption used to feel liberating, joyful—at least at the beginning. Now, though, my mind and body are contentious with one another: my mind maintains austerity in its course of governance, and its physical shell becomes its subjective colony.
If the I think, therefore I am of it all is the union between the physical and the mental then I’m in for quite a tug-of-war. A Purgatory, I suppose, where I’m not quite alive and I’m not quite dead. At rest, at peace, in hell, heaven, whatever.
I’ve been to Purgatory (with a capital P!), and get this: there’s no scale where they weigh your heart against a feather. Not one haloed baby hastily washes your soul with dish soap and kicks you out the door to your next destination, to which you’ll travel on a golden chariot or something (I haven’t gone to my Methodist Sunday school since middle school. Forgive me). In fact, no one else is there but you! You get to choose how long you stay. And this is the worst part: You start to feel comfortable in Purgatory, grooming yourself for perfection—transcendence from banal moderation—and the process ensnares you.
I’ve been here for a while, and I’ll tell you this: at the beginning, it’s easy to confuse isolation for moral, physical, and spiritual supremacy to those outside Purgatory. The signature loneliness of this place is cyclical and tricky; it’s rewarding and frustrating and upsetting and literally and figuratively gut-wrenching and and and. But it’s aspirational. Cozy, even.
As a gift, Purgatory offers you a self-driving vehicle that you have the pleasure and responsibility of pretending to steer. Visit Purgatory, Where the Destination is the Never-Ending Journey!
My dedication to the rules of this place is both addictive and fruitless, and as these two Purgatorian qualities cultivate themselves, my home becomes even more oppressive. My skin shelters a body disconnected from a kind mind. And instead of feeling anguish from Purgatory’s betrayal, I feel nothing, using food to numb the pain which only feeds my urge to once again chase emptiness.
And thus the simultaneously comforting and debilitating cycle continues: the transactions between my mind and body and the budgeting of nourishment within the conservative economy of Purgatory.
Nourishment.
It’s curious how the words we use to describe physical satiety can be tossed around in our emotional or interpersonal vernacular. Starved of connection. Full-hearted. Craving love. Empty. The more I begin to view Purgatory from an outsider’s lens, it becomes clear to me that this is no mistake, and that when I deny myself food, when I binge to a point of unbearable physical discomfort, when I purge the intakes of a binge, I’m defining the boundaries of the nourishment I allow myself and the nourishment I am allowed to consume. I find myself prioritizing my relationship with Purgatory over pleasure and love and peace.
Sure, this nourishment is physical. But it also includes the love I accept from others and that which I give. Purgatory promotes self-isolation as a survival tactic; if I distinguish myself from others as a denier of gluttony—a transcendent, mystical being—then my goals of having the elusive perfect body will be achieved and I need not fret about negative influences. By rejecting my cravings, I prove that I am on another plane of existence than the rest, one free of mortal temptation. This is the PR campaign that Purgatory funds.
Privately, I give into these temptations, and my shame manifests through purging. If no one sees, though, I have nothing to worry about! My pursuit of flawlessness may carry on in its aimless course. Privately, I allow myself abundance, an indulgence of nourishment and fullness which, in daylight, seems erroneous. I tend to think that these tendencies of mine exist in a vacuum: pathologizing my binging and purging and restricting habits seems like a waste of time. These transactions I arrange with myself are simply the prices I pay to dwell in Purgatory. It’s all fine. I’m fine!
But I’m starting to notice that the metaphysical implications of hunger—not just the movement of ghrelin to my brain—are beginning to creep into my psyche. The more I deplete myself of nourishment, my inclination to limit my interactions inflates. I grow skeptical of the affection others offer: my transactional relationship with food, which Purgatory has so meticulously groomed, now extends to my acceptance of soul nourishment.
All I know is that the absence of it in my life has to do with my preoccupation with Purgatory. Because the Purgatory I know so well was never about food, it was about control and economizing myself. Because excess is terrifying and inappropriate and undeserved and it’s also so damn lovely. And loveliness, care, and tenderness must be earned—this is what Purgatory drills into your brain and soul. You don’t deserve it, not unless you atone.
I never understood spirituality until I understood my relationship with food. My erratic phases of deprivation and delirious consumption cause nothing but emptiness, and reflect my tendency to isolate myself not only through the enlightenment of picturesquely healthy eating but through my relationships.
I’m crawling out of Purgatory slowly. The recovery process, as I view it now, is but a slow reckoning and reunion of a nourished mind and body: when I break free of Purgatory, I don’t intend to reach heaven or hell. I just want to come back down to earth.
If you or someone you know is struggling with bulimia, anorexia, or another form of disordered eating, please visit this helpline.