I’m celebrating four years with a diagnosis today. It’s also my 950th day without alcohol. I had no idea those timelines would overlap so well, but I’ve always known the stories were weaved together.
I’m not religious, but there will be many times in my life that I pray over a toilet bowl.
Whether it’s in my college’s shared dorm bathrooms, at Deliah’s in Vegas, a Nancy Silverton restaurant, a pop star’s front lawn, or just my apartment’s windowless box – many nights will end the same. Not to be confused with throwing up by choice, which I did at one point too, but this time by forces seemingly out of my control.
The first I remember getting sick is as a sophomore in college. I made a habit of eating Domino’s pizza in the middle of the night, roommates and I’s bellies full with disgusting liquor and cheap beer. However, despite living with three other roommates and paying a quarter of a million in tuition, we did not have our own private bathroom. Instead, we shared with our entire floor of peers. My room was roughly 85 steps away from it.
Looking back, pizza is the first meal that I remember triggering the after effects. The feeling of a burn in my sternum like a flaming sword had been stabbed into my chest and the fire having nowhere to escape but up the back of my throat. Even in the dead of sleep, I’d awaken almost gasping for air to aid the discomfort in what felt like my heart.
I remember counting each stride as a brisk walk would turn into a sprint down the hall, all 85 steps, with my hand covering my mouth. I picked the same stall every night to feel a sense of comfort. When there weren’t any other feet on the tile, I felt a small sense of relief. But the threshold of the door frame would make me start to gag just from conditioning, and the blue door with a gap and flimsy lock did little to shield me from others' view when they walked in on me. Spitting for hours into that familiar bowl. I’d rest my forehead right on the porcelain, switching between saying prayers to make it end and cursing at myself for eating greasy pizza and drinking pisswater in the middle of the night.
And I still didn’t go see a doctor. I didn’t see a doctor until after I graduated, after feeling like I could take the time to evaluate it now that my school life was complete. That was probably the first time I had a thought about my priorities. I took papaya enzymes before I went to the dining hall and before I went to parties. My mom had given them to me as a way to remedy my sickness. Maybe I didn’t communicate how I was feeling, or maybe she didn’t understand that this had progressed further than papaya enzymes.
I suffered through college, jobs, internships, and my life while being in a state of exhaustion and malnourishment. I allowed myself to push it as far as my body could take it before finally calling in the professionals. It was almost as if I had failed in trying to handle it myself, even with no diagnosis at the time. I thought I was allergic to alcohol and red sauce and anything spicy.
I have a thing about resilience and persistence. I think that I thought that the sickness was something to both accept that I had but also something I was meant to suffer through. There was no point where I believed that there would be a full solution that absolved my discomfort. I never thought it would be a quick fix, so maybe that’s why I let it get the way that it did.
One endoscopy and biopsy later– I am acid reflux supergirl. The doctors say that the cells in my esophagus have mutated due to the acid of the bile coming back up time after time. They tell me it’s a condition they mostly see in older people, not twenty-two year old girls who’ve just graduated from college. They tell me that it’s chronic now that I have it, and it will only worsen if I’m not careful. They say the scary “c” word to me. The cells cannot go back to their original state, so I take it as a sign that neither can I.
Not wanting to take daily meds means I can have no acid, no coffee, no alcohol, no citrus, no tomatoes, no red sauce, no bell peppers, no coffee, no coffee. They don’t know that in the last two years of college, I drank iced coffees as meal replacement. Swirling my wrist to shake my iced lattes sometimes three times a day, losing track of the caffeine intake or even the last time I had something solid.
Part of me knew my diagnosis would be tough to hear, especially because I knew I wasn’t taking care of myself. This will be an ongoing challenge in my early and mid-twenties.
My acid reflux story is a sobriety story too. I struggle with the decision to use that word to describe it, because it isn’t an addiction, but more like a daily choice each day that I choose to uphold it. People have told me that’s what it’s like choosing to stay married. It doesn’t mean it’s not difficult to wake up everyday and still choose that path.
Truthfully, in my experience, no one cares about someone who’s sober because of their health. It becomes less interesting when you unpack it, when it’s not plagued by tragedy. Still giving up alcohol during a peak time in a young person’s life changes their decision making. For me, it was in a good way.
It took me years to get to a place where I straight up declined or even told people I didn’t drink as a statement. Socially and professionally, everyone I was around drank. That is why I count my days the same way that anyone would. I often think about the mistakes I’ve avoided, the trouble I’ve stayed out of, but also the experiences I have missed. The accumulation of those days has been a reminder of a choice to do better for myself, despite a want not to.
There’s a reason I didn’t participate in diet culture, it’s a miserable life to be restricted. But I learned that I had to avoid foods all together to limit getting sick. It was better to be sure I was safe than to face the unknown options, so I stopped drinking alcohol, eating pasta, and inhaling coffee.
People my age only look at the menu ahead of time if they have anxiety or are indecisive. Both of which I am not. But now I’m one of those people who studies the menu before arriving. Checking ingredients listed before ordering, asking questions to the server about the makeup of the sauce, I’m no longer “easy”. I’ve always been picky, but this feels different entirely.
Then it got worse, and I started moving through the world differently. Checking to see where a restroom was upon entering a new, unfamiliar place. Scouting where I could buy water in a moment's notice at a venue. Drawing up an exit strategy upon entering the room in the event I need to make a quick break–I’ve thought of it, and it’s happened.
But there were many times where I was unsuccessful in avoiding a trigger food and the rest of the evening changed course. Like at a private Vegas dinner at an exclusive restaurant, I spent more time in a bathroom stall than I did at the table. Friends of mine were covering my back on business conversations. I was supposed to be a charming seat at the table, but when the appetizers were served– the smell of the chicken tenders made me run away scared. I was so mad at myself and my body for feeling this way, matched with a thankfulness for the privacy of a luxury bathroom to sooth my emotions.
That same weekend, I missed the headlining set of a music festival I had been invited to attend because I had to rush to bed in hopes to beat the dreaded vomit hour. I propped myself up with pillows in bed to sleep sitting up, as if I were in a chair, a trick I learned over time where gravity can help the food stay down. I wish I could’ve opened the windows, or stepped onto a balcony for a breath of fresh air. But the cool sheets of a Vegas hotel bed were the only comfort in a constant state of discomfort I was existing in.
There will be many other times.
When I had to run out of a Nancy Silverton restaurant after eating the best ravioli of my life, covered in a brown sugar sauce that I thought was “safe”. I barely make it to the restroom, which only has two stalls. Then I saw the Louboutins from my stall neighbor. I am disappointed in myself when I get home about throwing up a Michelin star meal.
It happens again when I’m invited to hang out with my friend’s friend, a rising pop star, at a house party. I ate an apple while I drove to her house in the valley, thinking it might be enough to let my body rest for the remainder of the evening. But I didn’t think through the choice to grab the green, granny smith flavor. I threw up in her neighbors’ bushes, then thought it was better if I just never went into the house at all. Throwing up in a pop star’s bathroom was not what I wanted for my introduction.
The day after Thanksgiving one year, I head to a friend's place to relax. I ordered myself a separate dinner, something “safe”. I decided to get a milkshake for dessert, an atypical addition to my order. I took two or three long sips before my cheeks started to feel hot and I sensed trouble coming.
It’s impossible to make it home because I’m a forty minute drive away and being sick on myself during the car ride does not seem like my next best option. Shamefully, I sat on the floor of her guest bathroom while she was still in earshot. Within minutes, I had thrown up my entire Thanksgiving dinner, my leftovers, and the $30 dinner I postmated half an hour before.
I wasn't fully ready to drive when I decided to, hoping that the universe would help me catch every green light, and for there to be no accidents on the drive back from Venice. I filled my reusable water bottle and took a plastic trash bag with me. Then I rolled down the driver’s side window regardless of my route back on the interstate before popping in Lorde’s Melodrama to my CD player.
I coached myself for the next twenty-five minutes. Every time I thought about food or vomit or feeling sad, sorry, or defeated, I tried to push the thought far out of my mind. Each one triggered these awful baby burps, which I feared might not be a burp each time. I visualized what I might look like coming out of my car in my garage, covered by my own mess after being unable to defeat my body. That visual doesn’t happen that time, but I fear it will. I got through 8 tracks of Melodrama before home. I skipped Liability and Writer in the Dark.
I’ve studied the insides of friend’s, stranger’s, and public bathrooms. For the decor, for cleanliness, for distractions. I know I’d rather throw up in my own bathroom if I can help it. The inside of other’s toilet bowls will only induce vomiting. The ring of filth around the waterline will activate my retching. Still, I don’t make it a priority to keep my bathroom perfectly clean.
I don’t know why I’m so mean to myself about the sickness. When mac and cheese is coming out of my nose, I say things like “gross”, “disgusting”, “horrible”. I’m not gentle with myself. I feel like I’ve been punished, as if I’m in trouble. I don’t feel like I need a hug or a cuddle. It does not feel like something other’s should know or hear or see. It feels like it should be secret. Like it should not impact the rest of my life when it so vividly does.
The next morning after getting sick always feels as if it never happened. I am hungry, because there’s nothing in me. I’m exhausted from the physical excursion. But for the most part, there’s no lingering symptoms other than the look of defeat that I wear comfortably. It’s like a fever dream, one that I wouldn’t remember having if I didn’t write about it here. It came, it went, and it will come again. The girl who pukes doesn’t feel like she is me, even though she most certainly is.
hot girls have tummy issues
you’re a beautiful writer i love u rafy