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I had the childhood any child could wish for, we are a very close, large family, and Mary and I, being so close in age had a special bond. I remember with fondness, constantly creating plays, dances and magic shows for the rest of the family to watch& We were a brilliant twosome.

This all changed however when Mary started to suffer from Anorexia. I was in my mid teens and was interested in boys, music and friends, whilst Mary started to become very depressed and insecure. We no longer had the long chats or giggles, and if anything it got to a stage where we barely communicated.

I used to look forward to our evening meals, they were always full of banter, and eating lots of mummy’s yummy food, but these times became the most awful moments of our evenings, supper that used to take 45 minutes, now engulfed the entire evening. Dad would lose his temper with Mary because she wouldn’t eat. Mum would then have to look after her all night while she sobbed, which meant that I no longer had time alone with my mum. My role was to make everyone laugh and ignore the situation.

I was the only sibling living at home during this time, my brothers and sister had already moved away. This was also hard; I didn’t have any other sibling to turn to. My older sister is married with two children and although she is my best friend, I felt had enough to do without being burdened with my feelings. My brother was supportive, but lived away from home and had his own life to lead, and as a result we started to drift apart. Whilst my eldest brother blamed himself so entirely for Mary’s illness that I couldn’t bring myself to talk to him. Mum and Dad were great, and were always there if I needed them, but they both had such a lot to deal with, I didn’t want to become even more of a problem for them, so I tended to keep it all bottled up and concentrate my energies on looking after my family and trying to maintain some sort of ’normality’ within every day life.

My role within the family changed considerably when Mary went into hospital. Family life by this point was a stark contrast to the previous buzzing, loud home in which I used to live. I would arrive home from school, to an empty house, mum would be at the hospital doing the ’day shift’. She would then come home at about 7pm, when dad had taken her place after he had finished work. I would cook supper while mum tried to do some work in the office, and we would eat together and keep some for dad for when he got home. Because the hospital is an hour away, dad wouldn’t get home until about 10pm, and by that stage we were all so tired, all we could do was go to bed and hope sleep would overtake us. My memory is quite blurred during that time; I seemed to have gone through it in a daze.

Visiting Mary while she was in hospital was very hard, she was a teenager in a children’s ward, bored out of her mind. She would constantly be thinking of ways to exercise, I would try to think of ways to occupy her whilst she was confined to bed &. there are only so many card games one can play!! I found it increasingly difficult to study for my ’A’ Levels, they didn’t seem to be important any more. I decided to repeat my first year in the sixth form, which was hard but a good decision.

School was challenging, Mary and I went to the same school, and of course I had the teachers and friends constantly asking how she was, and looking back the school and teachers were amazing to both of us, but I sometimes felt that everyone was concerned about Mary but no one wanted to know how I was!!!!!

This has been a difficult issue for me to deal with. I am lucky that I am a very grounded, confident person, but I believe that if I had a different character it would have been much harder and many more problems for our family could have arisen. The one thing I have always had a problem with however was the attention and support Mary received compared to me. I understand that she has been to hell and back, and I would never wish that on anyone, but since we first recognized the illness in my sister 7 years ago, I have only received one letter from a family friend asking how I am coping. Mary understandably received hundreds, but I used to feel so guilty about being angry about it, and have had to learn that it’s ok to be angry, it’s ok to need your parents, and if that means crying on their shoulder, even though they already have so much to deal with, well that’s fine, and from my experience they will be grateful you have rather than you bottle it up.

I am now studying in Leeds, in my second year at university and loving every minute of it. Mary and I are very close again, in fact she came up and stayed this year and it was one of the best weekends I’ve ever had. Mary’s illness has caused much heartache, but it has also been an amazing learning curve and has tested our family to the edge of survival. Being a sibling of someone suffering from an eating disorder is much harder than I think most people realize. I am lucky that I am a member of a fantastic family, and I am happy with myself, but there are moments of great isolation, depression, anger and hatred, but very little support. I felt I had very few people to turn to, and no one professional, and I only hope this will change for other siblings.

Zoe

Written by a www.eefo.net user.

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