I feel guilty for suspecting my sister of faking her anorexia and suicide attempt, but at the same time, those suspicions are too strong to be just brushed off. I don’t know what to do as I want to take her seriously, but she exaggerates way too much to the point I cannot believe ANY of it.

So first of all, she was hospitalized because she was sleeping too deeply one early evening. My parents didn’t have to search much to find a bottle of sleeping pills and another entire leaf of betablockers empty, both bought the same morning. She truly was unconscious when I assessed her, 6/15 on the glasgow coma scale. She woke up at the hospital after a few hours, and told us “I’ve taken seven hundred and fifty milligrams of beta blocker” even though not once did her heart rate drop, and mentioned something about the entire bottle of sleeping pills too, and yet she woke up after 7 hours since she had been noticed asleep? My dad takes the same pill and he says one is enough for a very, VERY deep sleep that rounds to about 6 hours for someone with insomnia, and he didn’t think there was any way for her to ever wake up because she had “consumed the entire thing”. When she became more oriented, she asked “where am i?” and when we told her “at the hospital”, it just wasn’t enough for her, she kept asking “but which ward?” and we told her it was just a general emergency ward, she got visibly disappointed and said “but I thought suicide cases end up in the psych ward”. DEAD GIVEAWAY. She was put on therapy, but…

Since that event, she stopped eating.
Apparently.
She would say no to food and act disgusted by the sight of it, and yet one day she accidentally slipped these words “it’s so hard to resist the delicious smell of food, that’s why I don’t hang around the kitchen so much”. Sometimes she would accidentally walk into my room while eating secretly from a packet of chips, and as soon as she’d realize she’s not supposed to be eating in front of me, she’d throw the packet at me in an exaggerated act of frustration and say “UGH it’s YOUR fault!! Why am I eating SO MUCH?”
She would come to my room multiple times a day asking me to give her a bite from my meal, but when I’d offer her the spoonful on her own request, she’d say “NO!! Why are you doing this? Don’t you know I can’t eat? Are you trying to make me fat?” and she would do this ALL THE TIME. She also started fat shaming, not people directly, but every time I’d show her someone who didn’t look anywhere near like a Victoria’s Secret model, she’d pass a comment on how disgusting fat people are.

So, basically, she came off as trying to gather as much attention and sympathy for her “condition” as she could get, all the while snooping in the fridge and stealing bites every now and then when no one was looking. She would come to me EVERYDAY AT LEAST ONCE when I was having a meal and say dreamily with an over-done tragic smile plastered to her face “you’re so lucky to have an appetite.”
One day, I hadn’t eaten all day because I was very stressed. That night, my stomach suddenly growled loudly while my sister happened to be in my room. She looked at me, then said ‘to herself’ in a VERY LOUD, CRISP-CLEAR AND WELL PRONOUNCED whisper “I wish that was me”, again with a dramatic shake of her head.

Did she lose weight? Yes. Drastically. But I argue that her lack of hunger is due to her anxiety and depression, and not primarily anorexia. I’ve been there too (genetics), but I wasn’t romanticizing it by screaming it in others faces for pity or accusing them of “making me fat”. She easily eats to her normal fill when it’s some expensive restaurant, or something unconventional is cooked, or simply if it’s not a home-cooked meal. And she’s been planning all this, because as she can’t TRULY resist the food, she used to order a big juicy steak and say “it’s all YOUR fault that I’m eating, remember that!” and she’d do that a lot. I felt very annoyed by that gesture. But now, very recently, she’s given it a name “binge eating”. Honey, no. It’s not binge eating. You’re just eating a normal meal in normal proportions. Don’t degrade real mental issues like that. Clearly she’s been reading her online friends’ real problems and wrongly romanticized them, and gone too far to personalize them.

Even today, as I was talking to her with the plate in my hand, she suddenly just started staring at my food as I was swaying it to and fro while talking to her, her head and eyes moving cartoonishly with my plate, again with a dramatically overdone tragic smile and fake “longing” eyes. It was so obviously painfully fake. After her lie about the suicide attempt, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s determined to fake anorexia too. I think her problem is way more complex than what seems on the surface and that worries me. She’s being treated for depression and anorexia but I think her problem is way different and more serious than that.

I’m just suuuper afraid to bring it up because I’m going to be accused of ‘shaming’ her mental health issues, but I’m sorry I’ve dealt with lying patients before, and this is SCREAMING Munchausen.