Title: 1 year later
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Blog Entry: I can't believe it has been over a year since I wrote a blog, or even checked my page. A lot has happened this past year and reading that blog I wrote in May of last year, it feels like a decade ago. I still feel a lot of those feelings, but I am a much different person. In February of this year, my older sister attempted suicide and ended up in the psych ward for a short stay. She was diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder and has been struggling horribly. While she was in the hospital, my younger sister admitted to being a heroin addict. None of us had any idea. For the next few months, my life was consumed with helping them. Spending time with them, making sure they felt loved, helping my parents and acting like none of it was a big deal (my parents really needed someone to make them feel like it wasn't the end of the world.) My younger sister is now in the program and putting so much work into it, I'm amazed. She has relapsed once, but got help immediately and never hid it. My older sister is still struggling and her mental illness scares me because I don't know what to expect or how to talk to her or help her. I had a friend growing up who had bipolar disorder and, looking back, he behaved very simalarly to my sister. The scary thing is, he's dead now.... I walk around in constant fear. Fear that my older sister will fall into a depression she can't get out of, or into a manic state that leads her off a cliff. I fear that my younger sister will relapse again...for the last time. I'm scared that I'll never stop being scared and worried about them. In all of this, I have had no time to even THINK about my own problem. Not that I've been fine. I hardly ever purge anymore (once every couple of months at the absolute MOST) but I rely on food to a sickening degree. It just doesn't seem like that big of a deal in comparison to what my sisters are dealing with. It is affecting my life. I feel terrible about myself. I'm married now and I want to feel happy and secure with my husband, not angry and sad and uncomfortable in my own body. I just don't have the time to think about it, let alone do anything. It reminds me of a film I saw where a boy was struggling with all kinds of emotional turmoil and he makes a comment to his younger brother like "You're so lucky to not have any problems" and his brother just says to him "Did you ever think that you were just so busy being weird that one of us had to step up and be normal?" It's not that I think my sisters are just "being weird" but I do feel like I just have to suck it up and be healthy. Ot at least, act healthy. I know that I'll never be able to properly care for people until I care for myself. I just havent mastered the art of having time for myself, my family, my job, school, my marriage, my disese. A couple (all) of these things take a blow as far as how much time I can spend consumed by them. Usually my self, and caring for my sickness get completely neglected. So much so, that when I do think about them, I feel like I'm thinking about someone else's life.
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