A Sisterly Look on Bulimia

I stared blankly at the orange vomit splattered across the asphalt of my driveway. “Are you okay? What happened?” I exclaimed to my sister. She said she was fine. I argued that throwing up probably meant she had the flu. She ignored me and went to play tennis as I contemplated what had happened.

My sister, Margaret, had always been an intense person. We had figure skated competitively for about 10 years, and she made figure skating her life. After being ranked 17th in the country for women’s figure skating, she stopped skating in preparation for college. At that time, she started having trouble finding her identity because she had been a figure skater for so long. Naturally, her body reacted differently to her diet once she stopped training 7 days a week and instead worked out at the gym 4-5 times per week. She began to binge and purge because she felt lost and unhappy.

I attempted to help by confronting her with my concerns. I said that she could be hospital­ized if she continued and that she had to stop. I even made a chart for her that marked the days that she didn’t throw-up with a sticker. She was really trying to stop but I didn’t see that. Even though I knew she had to make the decision to take care of herself, I kept pushing her to listen to me. I told her that watching her hurt herself was really hard for me.

I tried my best to be what she needed, but I didn’t know what she needed at all. I warned her about do­ing things that would later cause her to purge. She ignored my advice, so I tried to stay out of her way. I tried to show her I ate healthy balanced meals but could eat whatever I want­ed at the same time. I tried to put on my confident face so she wouldn’t see that I was hurting because she was hurting herself. I tried to be her role model.

The hardest part of my struggle was watching my sister be self-destructive and not being able to help. I eventually learned that giving someone advice doesn’t ensure that she will actually listen. Often, people have to figure it out for themselves. I feel that Margaret knew her be­havior was unhealthy, but she had to take the step for change herself. All I could do was tell her that I was there for her.

My sister saw some doc­tors to make sure her health was in check, and after the summer passed she went off to college. When she returned from her freshman year, she told me about how she had reverted to bulimia. The moment she told me, I physically felt pained by the news.

During her first year in col­lege, she had such a lack of nutrition that she had flu symptoms like chills. It had damaged her body so much that her heart rate became too low for her to return to college unmoni­tored. During the summer after her freshman year, she saw doctors and people specialized in eating disor­ders. Previously, I had assumed that bulimia wasn’t this dangerous; I only thought that stomach acid would damage your esophagus and teeth. I was wrong. I was so appalled by the effects of bulimia on my sister that I thought she could die of sudden cardiac arrest at any time.

She began improving slowly but steadily. She spent the next year at home working to keep her health stable, and I learned to accept her as a continuously healing person. She wasn’t going to get better in two months or any set time: it wouldtake a long time. I tried to start get­ting to know the person who she was becoming. We grew closer through this struggle and are still growing closer as she discovers more about herself.

Having a sister suffering from bulimia was a difficult struggle for me. Although we weren’t close as sis­ters, I worried about her all the time, even when she probably was not in danger of anything. Seeing her suffer made me feel useless, like I was los­ing my sister. From my perspective, bulimia was something consuming a person I loved, making her unreach­able, and making her do things that didn’t make sense.

Bulimia is a bigger issue than I had thought before experiencing this. It’s life threatening and hurts the sufferer as well as his or her loved ones. My relationship with my sister is unique, so the lessons I’ve learned may not be the same for everyone. Nevertheless, I have learned that when there is nothing you can do, the best you can do is be there to listen. If she wants to tell you anything, she will.

If you know someone suffering form an eating disorder, you can contact the Monsour Counseling Center at (909) 621-8202 or Eating Disorders Awareness and Prevention (EDAP) at 1-800-931-2237.