Friendships when you have any illness, chronic or temporary, are hard. When it is a temporary illness, you can be forgiven for cancelling something. But when it is a chronic illness, forgiveness wanes over time. As we fight our bodies to do what we ask, often the simplest tasks become a challenge. Some days, the act of making breakfast is enough to put me on the couch for a few hours. On those days, I often have to cancel any non-urgent things and only make the effort to leave my house for doctors. Unfortunately, non-urgent also extends visiting very important friends and family members. This is made worse by the fact that while I am on disability, I don’t appear or seem disabled to many people. On the outside looking in, it can look like this person who can generally function, just doesn’t care enough to make the effort.
Friendships, in general, can be ephemeral. They can wax and wane and sometimes disappear with age, changing locations, and just life in general. I am very lucky to have two friends who happen to be sisters that I have known since we were 5 (well, the younger was 4). They are more like my sisters, and we share our joy, pain and laughter often. Many other friendships came in high school, a few in college (I didn’t have a good experience in college, which I will go into in a future post) and more from jobs later in life. While it’s normal to gain and lose over the years, I have lost more friendships than I would like to admit in my 7 years of chronic illness. It’s a strain on the dynamics of a relationship of any sort when you can’t go out or visit as often as they’d like. Constantly hearing that the friend you want to spend time with declines time after time, I’m sure it can make them feel unwanted or under appreciated.
I’ve made the decision to accept that it isn’t my fault that people move away from my friendship. These have not been easy things to accept. I miss the shared history, the fun times we have had. It isn’t easy to accept the loss of friends, but after I’ve reached out multiple times and don’t hear back, then I have to accept that they’ve moved on. I’ve cried over these friendships leaving me, but I also know that I didn’t do anything wrong. I do try to talk to my family and friends when frustration strikes to discuss and find a resolution. I ask people to tell me if I do something they don’t like at the time so that we can work through it. Please remember that these are MY experiences and feelings, and can be very different than someone else’s. The friends I have retained still ask me to do things, even if they know I may cancel. They are okay spending time on the couch just being in the same room. I may still say no, but it is the ACT OF BEING ASKED that makes such a difference to me, and my friends. Just the simple action of letting us know that we are still accepted and welcomed in their space. That we are wanted. It’s such a basic thing yet something most often forgotten, because they assume we will say no and that no means we don’t want to be included anymore.
Being asked means you feel included, even when you physically can not do it. To me, that is what is important. And when I do attend something, I need to build in recovery time. Normally for ME that is a day, but I know people that for every hour of being social, they need a day to recover. So if they go to a 4 hour event, it can take 4 days to recover.
It is the rare occasion that people see my pain and challenges for themselves. I have other friends who use aids sometimes, and others who are full-time wheelchair users or other types of aids. These aids, no matter if we use them occasionally or every day, are our lifeline to the outside world… but it’s complicated. This is why zoom was so important. The pandemic has done some good things in this world; allowing people to talk via Zoom, FaceTime and other apps has offered a world of accessibility that people like me would otherwise not have the energy to accomplish. This is something that needs to continue long after Covid passes into our memories, because it’s been a game changer for many people.
Remember that at the end of the day, friends can be support, become your family or also leave our lives. All of these things are acceptable, it is just how life can change all of us. And our lives may be a struggle, but unless someone tell us, we may be missing what the friend is experiencing. No one can walk in our shoes, nor can we walk in others. Kindness is the important thing in all aspects of my life, and I try to help others by being kind about what I may be missing.
