Diane Shipley writes about her experiences as an ill person in a well person’s world...
With friends like that...
It's a cliché, but it's true: when you get ill you find out who your real friends are. Before M.E, that saying always conjured visions of supportive women bearing chocolate, casseroles and shoulders for crying on. I liked the idea that if something bad happened to me, I'd have a loving support system breaking down my door. Instead I found that most of my friends didn't want to see me at all.
No, that's not quite true: some of them did want to see me, but only on their terms - which were that I pretended nothing had changed. "Give me a ring/email/visit when you're feeling better" they'd say, and then I'd never hear from them again. A friend from university once told me that she wasn't prepared to drive all the way to see me "just for a cup of tea" - if I wasn't well enough to go out for lunch, I could forget it. As I'd been housebound for two months, this seemed beyond cruel.
It's not that people stop liking you, exactly, just that they stop understanding you. If you're the girl who used to chase multiple cocktails with *mumble* shots of tequila, finally rolling in around 4am for a few hours of sleep before lectures began, people will inevitably find it hard to grasp that you now go to bed at 10pm, hardly ever wear make-up, and only leave the house occasionally, always during daylight hours. And your new favourite drink? Water chased with chamomile tea.
I can't entirely blame my 'friends' for how they acted though - it was partly my fault. When the M.E first hit, I was so depressed, scared and plain old fatigued that I spiraled into a pit of shame and self-indulgence and didn't want to see or talk to anyone for months. But if my friendships had been truly deep connections, I'm sure we could have repaired the damage. I guess most of my friendships were based on circumstances rather than a similar outlook on life. And I changed and grew up in a different way from them, meaning we had even less in common the more time passed. But it still hurts to know I've been rejected for being ill, when M.E is just something I have, like eyes, or pyjamas - it's not my personality. Still, it's something some people can't see past.
I think it's partly because M.E lasts so long. If I'd been going through a twelve-week course of treatment, I'm sure I would have garnered more sympathy but eight years? People get a bit fed up. Plus it took me four years to get a diagnosis, and I'm sure some people wondered what I was moaning about, why I didn't just make the effort and force myself to get a job. (In fact, I know that's what they were thinking; they told me so).
You may think your friends will love you no matter what - I know I did. There's only one way to find out whether or not that's true, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it.
Next week, I'll talk about the upside of the situation: making new and improved friends, with the help of the internet...
If you'd like to be friends with Diane, please send cash donations or Mulberry bags c/o Dollymix. JOKE! When not feeling friendless and rejected, she co-edits Shiny Media’s fabulous women’s fiction blog, Trashionista and contributes to TV Scoop and Catwalk Queen, as well as writing a personal blog, What Do You Do?
