My stepsister had always been very slim: she weighed about 47 pounds and was all of 175 centimeters tall. She looked overly thin and was quite pale. The people around her always found ways to make jokes about her because of that. It was the relatives who hurt her the most. They were always coming up with new insulting phrases to “pick on” her: “Who will look at such a bony?”, “You should eat better, because it is terrible to look at these bones. Jokes of this plan continued even when she rented a separate house and moved. But then she became seriously ill. She underwent a complicated gynecological surgery, recovered for a long time. As a result she put on twenty kilos. She looked like a normal girl. She felt so good. Now she looked very pleasant and attractive.
Finally, there was even a natural blush on her cheeks. Outwardly my sister looked quite healthy. I did not notice any extra pounds. But she felt uncomfortable. Sister set out for their own destruction, because now her relatives began to make fun of her allegedly heavy weight. They called her a fatty and said that she used to look better.
Since then she began to put herself on different diets. For me, all of them were very unhealthy. She was addicted to the “tea” diet. She could only have tea and milk all week long. She went on an oatmeal diet. She also tried a vegetable diet. However, she was not able to regain her former weight. What she had lost during the diet was immediately put back on. I tried to show her that she was beautiful and she shouldn’t torture herself like that. But the others wouldn’t stop joking around.
One day her mother said:
– “You’re just overeating! Eat less and that’s it.
Just then she moved in with me because of problems at work, and the owner decided to sell the apartment she was renting. I heard this conversation with my mother. I didn’t have the stamina to keep quiet: I said what I thought and kicked the woman out the door. I think it was none of my business, but how long can you hurt this modest and quiet girl? It turned out that my sister just wouldn’t eat anything.
Noticing that something was wrong, I began to wonder if she had eaten. My sister said she had only eaten or washed the dishes after eating. She loved to cook for me. But somehow I discovered that she herself ate absolutely nothing. As a result, she collapsed and ended up in the hospital due to physical and emotional exhaustion. I remember calling her mother at the time and being angrily indignant. I can’t remember the details today, the events passed as if in a fog. Her mother listened silently and hung up on me.
Her sister was prescribed treatment. It wasn’t easy to cope with psychological anorexia, but after six months she was better. She stopped talking to her family. There was a family dinner at which her mother never said a word. Her sister was very surprised. During this time she had stopped losing weight, but she looked tired. She was not back to her former weight. But she looked good.
Now she is happy, she got an interesting job. We do not see each other very often. And once my girlfriend in the presence of my sister said that it would be better to reduce the amount of food, referring to herself. It was obvious from my sister’s face that this topic was still painful for her.
