Continue to let go Justin...you have to let it go.

Many of my blog posts deal with my views on relationships, chivalry, love, romance, and other related topics. Among those, there have been posts where I confess secrets from my past in an attempt to finally let go of those demons. This will be one of those posts. What I am about to reveal has been a secret that I have never shared with a single soul. Friends and family that I am closes with have no clue about this. And before I proceed, I want to apologize to all of them for not allowing them to help me when I definitely needed the support. I have never been one to share my feelings or let people in, emotionally, past a certain point. But I assure you I am doing my best to be better about not closing myself off and allowing others to help me just as I do for them. 

Before I get started, I want you all to know that it took me a while to muster up the courage to share this story. I am not the first person to deal with this and will absolutely not be the last. Also, I know there are many people that have had similar experiences but are in denial and will likely never admit to dealing with this problem. Hopefully after reading this you will find it within yourself to face your issues. 

With all that said here it goes…In college, around my sophomore year, I struggled with very intense self-image issues. Thinking back to those days, I remember absolutely hating the way I looked. My body, my face, everything…I hated it all. No matter how hard I trained with my teammates, I always felt like I was putting on weight. My weight would stay consistent and in a good range for my position but I felt as if I was gaining at least 10lbs a day. I had young ladies that were interested in me and would tell me that I was attractive. Despite their flattering comments, I never agreed. In fact, the more I heard it, the more I felt unattractive. I am a good guy so I just figured they were being nice and saying nice things although they really felt I was ugly. Every day, I would wake up and look at myself in the mirror with the deepest form of disgust for what I saw. 

In order to “fix” myself I started forcing myself to throw up multiple times throughout the day. Anytime I would eat, I soon follow it up with making myself vomit to get all the food out. Now, I understood all the health risk associated with this type of behavior. In fact, I was helping other student-athletes work through similar problems. I wish I could express to you the hatred I had towards myself as I told a friend how dangerous their actions were and then I go home and make myself throw up. It was bad, very bad. Soon I stopped eating all together. In my mind, no food intake would force my body to lose weight. Within a given week I would maybe eat one actual meal. The rest of the time, I drank water to help satisfy the feelings of hunger or I would eat a few pretzel sticks. But if ate too many pretzels I would make myself throw up. From about early August to the beginning of October, I lost nearly 50lbs. I was always tired and had zero energy. However, my life had to go on as normal so no one would catch on to my problem. When my coaches and teammates started to recognize the weight loss they obviously asked me what was going on. My common excuse was that I just didn’t have an appetite. My strength coaches would actually sit at meals with me and watch me eat a plate of food they prepared. I would force it down, appease them all, and then head home to vomit it up. Sometimes I would feel so disgusted, that I couldn’t even make it home to throw up. I would simply pull around the corner into an empty lot and throw up there. My way of somewhat keeping them off my back was to not let my weight room numbers drop nor allow my performance on the field to be affected. I would put in extra time in the weight room to make sure I was constantly getting stronger despite my severe weight loss. That in turn allowed me to continue my high level of play on the field because I would simply out muscle my opponents. I will admit, on a daily basis, while working out I felt as if I was going to pass out. I was so weak most days but I had to push through in order to keep my secret. One day we had to max on a certain lift but I was getting light headed from just stretching. I knew it wouldn’t be long before I passed out. I went to the bathroom and passed out in the stall. Once I woke up, luckily only a few minutes had gone by. I threw some water on my face and walked out the bathroom as if nothing happened. I then went to my bar, loaded my weights, and proceeded to record the highest max of the day. The entire time I felt as if I was going to faint yet again. But I forced myself to push through that wall and ignore those feelings. The more I pushed through, the easier it became to do it every day. Being in class, at practice, in meetings, or during games, I always felt like passing out. My vision would get hazy and my body weak. Regardless, I had to push through. No one could know what was going on. Honestly, after a while, living this way felt normal. I had become so good at “disguising” the truth that I just seemed to convince myself that I could go on like this forever. Plus the skinnier I became, the more defined my face was, and the better looking I looked…at least to myself. I still had issues taking compliments from people because I thought they were just being nice to sweet ole Justin. 

This behavior went on for nearly a year. Again, I had no intentions of giving it up. It wasn’t until one day I was in my room having just made myself vomit that I realized I had to change. As I was sitting in my room, I felt a sharp pain in my chest that would come and go. After about 5 minutes, my heart started to flutter and I had a cramping like pain in my chest. With this, I couldn’t breathe either. It was like I was suffocating and being stabbed in the chest all at the same time. My limbs started to go numb and vision was blurred. This lasted for nearly a minute but it felt like hours.  My entire body felt like it was shutting down. I hope you can imagine the fear I felt as that minute passed. Naturally I thought I was dying. I was alone in my room and my roommate had no reason to come in to my room. Therefore, it would have been hours until someone found me, whether I had just went unconscious or actually died. Can you understand the anguish that would have caused my family and friends? Especially my mother!!  Makes me emotional just thinking about it.

Honestly, I’m not sure what happened that day. It could have been a heart attack, a mere loss of breath, a heart flutter issue, etc…It really doesn’t matter. What does matter is on that day I understood that incident as being a direct result of my poor health habits. The food deprivation, forced vomiting, and making my body exert itself when it clearly did not want to, were all destructive behaviors that led to that day in my room. I don’t care what anyone says, in my mind, that’s what caused it all. Admittedly, things didn’t change overnight. However, I made a committed and conscious effort to slowly get myself better. Slowly, I started realizing that I was not as “ugly” as I saw myself to be. Also, I was not gaining weight with every bite of food. I still do not know where those thoughts came from in the first place. I had always been a very secure person. But something changed and I hurt myself in very harsh ways. To this day, I have times where I am not happy with the person I see in the mirror. These occurrences are rare but they still happen. However, I think back to that day in my room and remember how awful of an experience that was for me. This helps me push those negatives thought away and get back to my secure and extremely self-confident way of life.

As with all my post in which I reveal the darkness from my past, I do not want anyone’s sympathy. I merely want to let go of these things that weigh on my heart day in and day out. Also, I trust no one judges me for the things I shared in this post. It may seem a bit foolish for a collegiate football player to deal with bulimia and self-image issues. But believe it or not, I am not the only one. Many people, especially athletes battle with similar problems. However, many will never admit it to themselves, much like I did not do for a long time. For those of you in denial about your problems, my hope is that this blog will help you finally face the truth. Trust me, it feels so much better to get it out. Please, no more hiding from what is real and no more pretending it didn’t happen. Face your past and even your present to help provide yourself with a better future.

Here’s to a better you…and me!

Justin