Thinking back, I’ve come to realize I’ve always had some telltale thoughts and signs of an eating disorder, but it didn’t come to be full fledged until high school. I was about thirteen or fourteen years old when it all started. My sister is six years younger than me. Coincidentally, her problem began when she was about fourteen years old also. I went from 130 pounds to eighty-five pounds. Everyday was a struggle, to say the least.
I discovered cocaine to help with the anorexia so I wouldn’t be hungry. That is until a high school “friend” introduced me to heroin. For a while I was sniffing it and it would make me feel good but also vomit. Thus making bulimia an easy and great idea. At this point—now sixteen years old—I was introduced to the needle, now making me a fulltime heroin addict in high school. All this time I hadn’t realized my little sister was watching me and every move I made.
The drugs helped me “forget” my little eating problem (I still have tendencies toward it), but what was going to help me with my drug problem? I gained some of the weight back, now weighing one hundred pounds. (Although I am five-foot-two, so I can’t be that skinny, right?) To speed up the time line, when my sister turned about fifteen, she had already been in and out of a hospital because of anorexia. She is now nineteen years old and I am now twenty-five years old. My little sister is dying and I am too wrapped up in my own selfish drug addiction to help her.
She must weigh between seventy-eight to eight pounds. She has gotten so bad that NOTHING touches those sweet lips of hers except water. I am trying to be there for her, but how can I when I can’t even be there for myself? Our family blames me for all of this because I can’t or won’t talk to her about her problem. They say since I have experience in it, that I should show her in the right direction. But what is the right direction? Because most of the time I can’t see it myself! The fact remains that she will most likely die within the next year. That is how bad this eating disorder has consumed her.
We can’t monitor her every move because she goes away to college. We’re scared something will happen to her there and she would have died alone ... My mother “jokingly” says to me on occasion, “So, who’s gonna go first? You or your sister?” I don’t care what happens to me, but my sister has SO MUCH going for her in college. She is so gifted. I love her more than I could ever describe to whomever is reading this. Please, think about, pray for, whatever it is you do to show faith in another human being or higher power or whatever. Please do it for my sister. I don’t want her to die.
