Need help about a troubled friend...

seeshell

There is a girl "X" that I recently befriended, she is nice but suffers from anorexia.

Here are the facts. X has had a very hard life. her mother has been sick for a long time, doesn’t even recognise her daughter. She is going to die soon. Her father has become bitter and suffers from cardiac problems. Her brother also has a cancer but is healed and X had a cancer in her hip and had to replace it with a artificial one.

When she was ill, nobody really supported her apart from her friends. Her family was sick too and when she complained she was told that she was not the only one who was suffering.

Anyways, a few months ago, she stopped eating, she finds food unimportant and repulsed by it. She is now in another town for her studies, staying with her godmother and husband who are both kind, motherly and fatherly and are trying to help her out. The problem is that she is not used being taken care of and so doesn’t want any help. She knows she’s anorexic but continues to say that she feels good and that she is ok. She leads a normal life, goes out, party, drinks but of course faints every day due to lack of food.


Here is where I come. As my parents are good friends with her godmother, I met her and become friends with her, I am just 2 years older than her (i'm 23). She is nice and always laughing.

However last night I spent the evening at her place. The next morning we help out her godmother by cleaning her garden, I notice that she disappears and when she talked to me I smelt alcohol. So she’s drinking alcohol on an empty stomach! Great. Of course a minute later, she faints and bashes her head against the floor,

I try and get help but she refuses to let me go. She says that her hip is sore. She is lying on the floor, all drowsy but continues to say that she is fine. I help her up and she suddenly runs and bumps into a wall, then goes to the toilet where she faints again. This time i get help, when her godmother and husband arrive, she pushes them away telling them that she is just tired.


She told me her problems suddenly out of the blue yesterday. She says she gets into weird situation such as walking outside at 2 o’clock in the morning, finding herself in a strangers house who is drunk and on drugs, stealing a bottle of his wine and his car keys because he wanted to drive drunk,, getting stalked (she is very pretty and friendly), she tells me all of her problems with her sickness such as her whole family left her lying on the floor in their home for hours when she broke her hip before calling an ambulance, that they said that she was just pretending to suffer, etc) also said that she was attacked on her way home ( true because she had a black eye) and was raped and abused by strangers and that the policemen didn’t believe her. And so much more.


She told me that her godmother’s husband was cheating on her and showed me text messages and voicemails of his lover to prove it and so on.


To be sincere, I am a quiet person, don’t go out much and maybe naïve. First I was shocked, so sad and angry that people could be so cruel. I tried to comfort her as well as I could. I told her that I was so sorry, that she was courageous, that I was always here if she ever needed to talk to her and that she should let the people to love her, help her and that she didn’t need to fight alone, she has us. She agrees but says that she is not used to all of this and that she wants to continue living.


So today, I arrived back at my place, crying my eyes out, I don’t know what to do, I don’t understand why she told me all this as we don’t know each other very well. Then I started thinking, her godmother had told me that she craved attention, maybe she made some of the things up to get my attention, some things she told me just doesn’t add up. She seems to have problems after problems and getting into sitatuation that no sane person would get into. But on the other hand, what if everything she said is right and that I have no right to doubt her?


But what can I do? I can’t talk to her godmother because she made me promise that I wouldn’t repeat what she said. As shameful as it seems, In some part of my mind I feel that she had no right to tell me that, can you really tell someone you only met twice “oh by the way I was raped twice? But don’t tell anyone ” and then just changes the conversation. this situation just seem too unreal.


But I do care for her. And even if she did make things up I still want to help but I need to know if shes telling the truth or not.

Her godmother and her husband are going on holidays for 2 weeks and have asked me to take X to live with me during those 2 weeks. However, after what happened i don't know if i am able to do that...i had told them i would take her in for those 2 weeks but that was before all this happened......

Karen_*

The girl needs more help than you can give and you certainly can't take her for two weeks.

I would make a judgement call on this and tell her Godmother everything she's been saying and let her take it from there. Then distance yourself. This is way too much to take on and you're not qualified to do it. Nor should you feel you have to.