Earlier today my sister(who’s name will not be said) decided to open her heart and tell me and my family what her life was like two years ago. She’s a very happy person, always talking and laughing. Which is why the words that came out of her mouth were so very disturbing.

It turns out she used to be anorexic, bulimic, and a cutter. She starved herself so she would feel “prettier”. She said it made her feel good about herself. She forced herself to vomit after every meal, so she wasn’t exactly getting any nutrition from what she ate. And then there’s the cutting. She had an addiction to the act of cutting herself. “Your wrists aren’t the only places you can cut.”, she told us. She eventually fainted from malnutrition. Most of us just looked the other way. When we did speak up, she said it was the side effect of taking some sort of supplement. Again, we shrugged and looked the other way.

On her school bus, she faced verbal and physical abuse. A boy grabbed her by the throat and threatened to kill her if she told anyone that he lit a stream of body spray with a lighter in the bus. Another time some student threw a used “sanitary napkin” at her. It was soaked with blood. All of this was happening to a fourteen year-old girl. Where was her brother in all of this? Well, like an idiot he picked on her. He teased her, and made fun of her. All while she had to put up with those terrible events in her private life.

She said she was ready to take her life unless God did something in her life. She was fed up. She turned on her iPod and went under the bus seat. The song that came up said that Jesus is always with us. That we should speak to Him about anything we face. That afternoon, she hugged her Bible with tears in her eyes. Two years later, she’s the president of the Youth group at our church, and she’s lent a major hand in the foundation of a local ministry.

I’m happy that her life has seen such a major turn around, but I’m angry at myself for being a failure of a brother. Instead of detecting all these things that were going on in this poor girl’s life, I made things worse. Instead of being a shoulder for her to cry on, I shoved her closer to taking her own life. I screwed up majorly, and if it wasn’t for God, she wouldn’t be here today.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that we should be careful of our actions. We should keep a wary eye out for any signs that our loved ones are going through tough times. If you have any siblings, reader, I ask that you be a good brother or sister to them. Talk to them and make them feel loved. You don’t know what might be going on behind closed doors.