Diary of a Mad Bulemic Model

October 2007
I was hanging out with my friend Alex. Ideally, this would be the point in my life where I’m in that mentality that anything is possible. I’m a college freshmen, after graduating salutatorian and with more awards than I know what to do with. But maybe that’s just it; maybe that’s what led my life in the wrong direction in the first place – my mentality was off from the start.
I was using one of my off days to spend time with Alex, since she worked full time and had few opportunities to hang out. We were sitting around trying on the multitude of new clothes we had bought that day. This was of course before my massive credit card debt had accumulated, so I was putting money on my Macy’s card like it was nothing. We decided that day that we should both be models.
We went out to Galena Forest to take our first shots. We are both rather competent photographers, so our portraits turned out rather well. We are also photogenic, which helps out too. We invited a boy that I was seeing, Nathan, to also help out. He was great, but always taked about how fat he was. It got me thinking that I should probably start thinking about working out. But I still looked okay, I guessed. Perhaps that’s all you really need to start out in this business.. But things were looking good. Both of us had job offers within a week of taking our first shots and posting them online.

November 2007
My first photo shoot went pretty well. I was so nervous, but more than that I just had no idea what was going on. I met with the photographer at the location (a lake in south Reno) and I just stood there. I felt like an idiot – what was I getting myself into? The other two models that were there were so much skinnier than I was. I had gained considerable weight since I graduated and now had a very well formulated two pack. I had nice thick legs from running track for four years but I still could have stood to lose some weight.
The models were talking about doing coke. Apparently that was their secret to staying thin. They could cheat on their diets the entire week as long as on Friday and Saturday night they each had a few grams to keep their metabolism in check. I asked them what would happen if they didn’t get any. Would they just exercise or would they just skip meals the following week? They replied that they would just probably throw up their food. I was sort of shocked, this seemed so extreme and they were so chill about talking about it.
The photographer asked us to take our shirts off about three quarters of the way into the shoot. I froze, and then reluctantly took my shirt off. The photographer looked at me and then told me that I did great and that he would call me when I could pick up my shots.
I got home and just stared at myself in front of the mirror. Wow, I thought. How did I let myself go like this? I was in great shape all through high school and I thought that I should be working out. I looked at the toilet and thought about what the models had said. If it’s not a big deal, why shouldn’t I be able to do it without a problem.
It was pretty messy. I got junk all over the toilet seat and all over my face. I cleaned up and looked at myself. I felt skinnier. I felt like I was taking charge of my life and it felt great. My eyes were bloodshot and my abs hurt. I thought maybe that was how you got such good abs when you model all the time.

December 2007
After little over a month and a half of a nice little routine in which every day I would go to the gym, violently make myself sick in the bathroom, and then work out for upwards of two hours, I had a great physique. I had a literal eight pack and I was now fitting into clothes I couldn’t even wear in high school .
But it didn’t seem like enough. If I ate a meal, I would immediately excuse myself to go to the bathroom. I would then pull up my shirt and stare at my body. Somehow, some way, the idea would present itself that I had a little too much fat in my system and that the meal would serve no purpose to my body other than to make me fatter. I thought about how I would look if I got even skinnier and I decided that I should still do it. I wasn’t getting many job offers, and as such I had to go online to look for photographers. I asked one and he looked at my pictures, looked at me, and said I should probably quit the modeling for a while and get healthy. I had no idea what he meant.
I was dating a guy at this point that one day walked into the bathroom to discover me dry heaving over the toilet. I was having trouble getting my chicken wings up, and he gave me a look and told me that I didn’t drink enough water. If I had at least thirty two ounces of water during my meal, it would make puking it up so much easier. I just stared, and then said thank you. The next day I had a shoot, so I tried this technique. It worked.
I was throwing a party at my apartment that night when I started to dry heave into a beer pong pitcher. I had been doing straight shots of Jose and I was feeling pretty stupid, and my stomach felt like it was going to burst. My friend Crystal took one look at me and started screaming. Crystal was gorgeous, and had ambitions to become a Victoria Secret model, and had an amazing physique. What the fuck did she know? Crystal had also had quite a lot to drink, and when she yells you can’t really hear anything else. “You’re going to fucking kill yourself! Your premed and your body is falling apart! Are you fucking stupid?” were among her choice comments.
Two hours and two more friends later, I was feeling pretty shitty about my life. Being lectured by people that didn’t know much about what I was going through was not very helpful. I know that their hearts were sincere, but at the same time I wasn’t really all that interested in what they had to say. Crystal’s comments rung through my head though, and I just stared down at my body while they talked. They said that they were all going to help me and get me to stop. I thought that I should go work out, since I never threw up that day and I had a lot to drink. I had a shoot the next day, after all.

January 2008
I was driving home from my friend Andrea’s house and I just had started to feel dizzy. It had been happening for a few weeks, and I assumed it was some unrelated thing like stress or something. I had just been put on medical leave from UNR because I had a dramatic moment in my dorm and chopped my arm to shreds because I had a bad day.
One report led to another and since I was also president of the hall council among other things, my parents had intervened and asked the school board to force a vacation on me. The entire time I was being told of this, I was thinking of what the ambulance guy had told me – “you need a vacation, man”, after I had told him what I did that day, which included various meetings and such for the hall council, debate team, and etc. I also had a meeting with Nevada Casting to be signed to their modeling agency. I made the mistake of mentioning my eating habits to one of the models, who relayed that information to the supervisor. I didn’t get a call back.
I was pissed, of course, about getting kicked out of school. I got a pretty good GPA my first semester of college, and I didn’t understand why I was being punished for something that I felt was something minor. So what if I freaked out? Everyone makes mistakes. So I had a lot of free time on my hands, as I had also been summarily fired for stealing clothes at my job. It was pressing on my budget that I had gone from a waist size of 36 to 32 in less than two months, and I needed new clothes to model in, so I thought it was okay. My friends and co-workers, however, disagreed.
Anyways, I got pretty dizzy and ended up crashing my car after I hit some ice and was too incoherent to gain control. I hit the curb in the middle of a snowbank and my car brushed a tree. I hit my head pretty hard against my car window, but other than that I think I was fine. I was so dizzy, though. I felt nauseous and faint as I dialed my friend Jeffrey’s number. I was staying at his house that night. I can’t really remember talking to him or whatever, and the next clear memory was my 150 pound best friend hauling 185 pounds of dead weight to his truck. I was so bleary I just kept on apologizing. I said I hit black ice and lost control, but I didn’t elaborate. He didn’t ask. The next day I had a meeting with the agent at Nevada Casting. He told me to go get help.

February 2008
I had been hanging out with a group of gay guys for a while. We went out to lunch and were pretty chill. I was so excited because I felt like I belonged. I had come out of the closet four or five months ago and as such the awkward transition was still in effect where most of my guy friends didn’t want to spend much time around me. A lot of my friends had dropped me, including Crystal, because my behavior hadn’t improved. I got really good at hiding my puking, but I had other health problems that were increasing in severity that were getting harder to handle.
I started seeing this guy named Ralph, and we got along right from the start. He was pretty cute, Philippino I believe, and we struck it off right from the start. I was staying at his apartment every night from the moment I met him, which sounds bad but it wasn’t. He was the first person that I was really comfortable with. He looked like a model and had the amazing body of one, which meant that every day I would think about his nice body when I was in the bathroom. I think he knew, and he tried feeding me every day.
The next week my friend Brad was throwing a Valentine ’s Day party. I had worked that day (by then I was working at Arrowcreek Country Club) and I got off around midnight. I went straight to the party, and I walked in to see Ralph making out with another guy. I didn’t care at first, but I went into the kitchen and poured myself a double shot. I kept thinking about how the guy that he was with was so skinny and how I had gained back some weight because I couldn’t throw up all the time with my friends watching me like hawks. I started downing shots and lost coherency soon after.
The next morning I woke up in bed with two other people. Fuck, I thought. We got up and went to sushi, were Ralph worked. I was so ashamed I could barely look him in the eye, and he asked me what was wrong on my way out. I said we would talk later. The text I got later, “You and Brad, last night?” made my blood run cold. I felt like a piece of shit.

March 2008
I had been seeing Brad for a while. My friends finally got sick of me and one day informed me that I was not to be living with them for much longer, so I got my stuff and headed to Brad’s house. He was being really great to me, and I was a complete and utter mess. A day didn’t pass without me getting dizzy, nauseous, or otherwise incapacitated. I could barely focus on what little in life I had going on. The day I got kicked out I went to Brads and cried for a while. I don’t think he knows what I was crying about, though.
I hadn’t had a single modeling gig in about a month, and I was feeling pretty helpless. I was convinced that even though my bulimia was the reason I wasn’t getting jobs, It was also the only obvious way I could get back into it. The photographers that had given me a step up now ignored my messages and requests to shoot. I didn’t know what was wrong.
I could barely hold my life together and I was afraid that Brad was going to find out a whole slew of things that I didn’t want to get out, so I broke it off after a couple days of being official. I went over to my sister’s house, and she talked to me for well over four or five hours. I told her everything. About a week or two, she invited me over to watch a movie, which seemed strange at 10:00am. Her voice didn’t seem quite right. When I got there, one of my photographers, my sister, and a few of my friends were there. I was informed that I was being sent to Desert Vistas, a rehabilitation center for eating disorder victims. I didn’t really have a choice in the matter, and I was so defeated I just got in without argument. I drove off with my life at complete rock bottom.

July 2008
One hundred and eighty degrees later, I had a positive spin on life and was pulling it together pretty well I had been working at Silver Peak for a few months, and I quickly moved up in ranks there. I was working one Friday night looking pretty fierce. I was in great shape from training for a marathon that was to be the following week, and I felt great, which exudes a better image to everyone, I think. A lady walked up to me and asked me “Why aren’t you in L.A. modeling right now? You’re gorgeous!” she then informed me that she did finances for OJ International, a modeling agency based out of Sacramento. She said that I had a great look and to email her some shots so she could forward them and get me in. for a second, I had an urge to go in the bathroom, but then I realized that she probably wouldn’t have asked me to be in the agency if I didn’t look good enough.

August 2008
I was in Sacramento doing a photo shoot for Undergear Magazine. I was in shock at how easy the opportunity was. I did pretty well, but none of my shots were chosen. I have a great outlook on life now, and I didn’t let it get to me. I set up a meeting with an executive and asked what I needed to do to be more successful. As I had assumed, my shots weren’t chosen because my modeling resume was not quite up to par with what they wanted. It had nothing to do with my image – they told me that I had a great look and that people like me were in high demand. He said that my resume in other aspects was great – my intelligence and community involvement were spectacular and would be great selling points to any photographer or company. He advised me on how to revamp my resume and to get more diverse photographs before asking to do a big shoot again. He also informed me that he was sending me to the VMA’s the next month in LA to do some promo work.

September 2008
I’m extremely content with life. I haven’t thrown up in six months, and I have never been healthier. My modeling career is taking off pretty well, and I can attribute that to my life outlook. I think that people assume that modeling is all about shallowness and negativity, but I think that while that might have been true, I now believe that a turnaround is in progress that means that looks aren’t’ the only thing that matter. I still care a lot about my looks, but I think it’s different in the fact that I don’t judge myself or other people by them. I look great now, better than I ever did when I threw up, and I think that is because people can sense confidence and self-respect. The fashion industry has completely changed my life, both for the worse and now for the better. It’s all about how you approach it and how you let it affect you. Going to the VMA’s was awesome. I met a really nice model named George who had a strikingly similar life experience. He told me that he could tell that I was going to do well. And that’s all the feedback I need.