<p>Every time I look at Jessica I feel a little bit angry, a little bit sad. Her gradual transformation into a skeletal shadow of the sister I once had has triggered a constant conflict within me. Should I play the part of the ignorant sister or speak up and risk alienating her from me even further? The answer may seem obvious but the courage and the words have yet to come to me. </p>
<p>I have often wondered when it began, but there was no day, no week, and no traumatic incidence to spark the slow deterioration of Jessicas body, simply a slow accumulation of changes. Whenever my family and I went out to eat, Jessica and I used to immediately flip to the dessert page and preemptively pick the dessert with the most chocolate in it. The ratio at which we split it become increasingly unbalanced until I no longer even thought to ask her if she wanted dessert. The situation continued to escalate until Jessica no longer ate with us at all. I had to watch her chew air as though it were a 16-ounce strip steak and refrain from screaming out in frustration. </p>
<p>My frustration intensified as she became increasingly isolated from the outside world. Her desperation for control consumed her. It forbade her from letting people get close to her, and from experiencing anything other than the strict routine she had created for herself. This ever-increasingly strict routine acts like a jail for her, and with every bar she puts up I feel her slipping further and further away from me. I do not want my sister to be a stranger to me, but I fear this fate is becoming inevitable. Watching her slowly lose touch with her friends, separate herself from society and recoil into her nest of treadmills and counting calories frightens me. She never laughs anymore; even a forced smile is rare. I wanted to grab her and shake until she opens her eyes, but they are so focused that no force I know will break her gaze. </p>
<p>Jessicas growing focus became too apparent to ignore upon my return from camp one summer. I walked into my house and saw her standing there. As I recounted my trip to my family my eyes kept glancing back to her legs. They had been whittled down to mere sticks. Every bone in her body stuck out; I could count her ribs and that terrified me.
A few weeks later Jessica, my mother and I were standing six hundred and sixty steps away from a statue of Hercules, which we had climbed up only six years prior. I started up but kept glancing back to make sure Jessica was okay. Her legs looked as though they had forgotten their purpose and simply dragged along with the body they were attached to. I wanted her to be able to walk up those steps with me, to be the sister she was six years ago, but every additional stepped looked as though it would cause her bones to snap in half. My mother simply told her to go back and wait for us, but I could see the escalating worry in my moms taut smile. I felt it too. The truth was becoming more difficult to ignore. Six years ago I had a sister who could race me up a flight of stairs. Six years is a number. That number quantified her illness and showed just how much had changed; that number made everything real. I knew right then and there that I would have to do something. </p>
<p>I began to conduct research that drew me into the medical world. I had found medical lectures on the subject, watched videos documenting the detrimental health effects of anorexia, and discussed the subject with a young woman, not unlike Jessica, who had overcome the disease. Her knowledge, perhaps the least scientific, was the most honest and the hardest to digest. She told me there was next to nothing anyone can do for someone whose brain would not allow her another bite, force her to go run a mile, and convince her that she could only be happy by being thin. The psychological aspect of Jessicas disease as well as the physical toll it was taking shocked and fascinated me. The discovery of my passion is the one positive thing that has come from this. I refuse to believe that there is nothing I can do for Jessica, but my curiosity has led me no closer to an answer. </p>
<p>The research also did not shed light on why Jessica of all people is this way. I did not grasp why someone would want to look like the emaciated figures who walk the runways. I understand now how difficult it is to give up control; the left side of my brain recognizes that a desire to have control is within everyone. It is easier to continue doing what you know than taking a chance. What I have yet to grasp is how it all began. She was and is my big sister whom I love, and watching her forgo her health and happiness for control is brutal and may never be something I can fox, but I am trying to, and I will continue to try to find a way to free her from the prison she has built around herself. All I want is for her to find something that makes her happy, but she has slipped so far away from me that I do not know what her savior could be. I see shadows of girls walking in the halls of my school, my neighborhood, even the grocery store; I see Jessica in all of them. All I want is for them, for her, to see what I see, and it is not beautiful or fashionable, it is sad, sad and scary and frustrating for everyone involved, because if someone does not want to be helped, what can one really do.</p>