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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 any thing 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 loose 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 I love her to bits and she's one of my best friends, I still can't talk to her about the illness rationally as I've always felt she had enough to do already 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 9pm, 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 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.
continued.......
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