Silver Lining?

So I want to start this out by saying, "dang this blogging stuff is HARD". No, seriously it is. For me anyway. Not because I don't have anything to write about. I have a million things running thru my head. But I am always like, "well people probably don't want to hear about that", or "I think that's too depressing", which lately would wipe out most of what I want to write about. Or "maybe I will offend someone with that". Then I think, "who cares what others think, this is my blog". Well, I must care or I wouldn't be writing a public blog. HMPH! So yep it's hard. I finally decided to write this one, with just a little trepidation. Okay, a lot. So here it goes.

People talk a lot about finding silver linings in bad things. I hear a lot of people talk about losing friends with this illness. Some say the silver lining is that they have weeded out the people in their lives that weren't true friends in the first place. Sadly, I have encountered this. Moving here to this small town, not knowing a soul was HARD. It was lonely with no friends or family. After a while I became best friends with a neighbor and joined a church. I soon figured out, though, that in small towns, people have literally grown up together. They have decades of history. They can reminisce about when they were in diapers, swapping binkies. That is hard to break into, people. Very hard. Slowly, I started to be included. I had friendships that felt real. I was confided in about deeply personal things. Had adventures and fun times. Served with many of them on a weekly, if not daily abundance of church activities. There were still times though that they would all get together for a BBQ or something, and I was never invited. Then I would have to sit and listen to them all talking about it and how frickin hilarious so and so was, while trying not to be hurt. It was a reminder that I was not completely accepted, and it always left me hurt, and wondering, what the heck? But I would just push it aside, and go on with these friends. Tell myself to buck up and not be a baby about things like this.

Let me tell you something about myself that may help you to understand my feelings about friendships. I have a insane need to be connected with people. I also feel the need to be liked by all. It really is pathological. I will take tons of crap from people. How sad am I? I am not the kind of person that feels satisfied with superficial friendships. I'm kinda a whole hearted kinda girl. I feel deeply. I want deep connections with people. So I open myself up. Sometimes too much. I get hurt. Most of the time, I realize that's part of life, a consequence of being an open book. I move on. Such is life.

Then I got sick. I hid it for years. Until it finally got to a point I could no longer hide it. I could no longer function normally either. My whole world fell apart. I stopped attending church, and church activities. I basically dropped off the social face off the earth. I wasn't a fun person anymore. I was just SICK and that is it. Once I went and asked for prayer with some close friends. I felt prayed AT. I got the real feeling they didn't believe I was physically ill. It hurt and I didn't go back. People that I considered my close friends, seemed to forget I even existed. Not once did they call to ask what was going on with me. They were all told by my sister and others (myself included) that I was really sick. NOT one phone call, not one visit, not one offer of help. Literally it was like i didn't exist. It was so painful. When it became too much to have them in the fringes of my life, I started to cut all ties. I deleted them off my facebook page.They never, ever commented to my posts about being sick, never offered any encouragement or called me after an obviously troubled post. Their silence was just too hurtful. I also had many be hostile. HOSTILE????? What the heck? I mean really? I have been isolated, sick as a dog in my house and you are hostile to me???? Like what could I have done? I am truly still baffled by this.

So I guess I should be able to say, "good riddance". Be happy in the knowledge that it is better that they are out of my life, they weren't true friends. I should feel cleansed, lighter somehow. But I don't. I feel gutted. I feel abandoned. I feel so so lonely. It also leaves me to wonder why? Why am I so easily forgotten? I am left feeling less then. Like there is something wrong with me. I mean how can I share the times I had with those people, only to be forgotten at the drop of a hat. Maybe I am just a crappy forgettable person. Not worth any ones time. Maybe I wasn't a good friend? I don't know.

The sad thing is, knowing what they have done, I would trade back to the way it was. I would love to not have gotten sick, and still had these superficial relationships in my life. It was less lonely. There were fun times. Now there is nothing. Chalk up another loss to my illness. I mean why not strip EVERYTHING in my life away? So a silver lining? No, I think not.

Now having said all this, I will tell you what the true silver lining is. It is the friends that have truly stuck by me. They have been there for me all the way. I love you, you know who you are!!!! They ease the loneliness, the hurt. I wish like heck that I could focus on that and wash away all the hurt from the others. I wish I was capable of that. But I told you I was pathological didn't I?