Friends and Family: The Good, Bad, and the Ugly

- The great gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never even introduced yourself to had life not done it for you.
                                                                               - Kendall Hailey

I will never forget Christmas Eve 2002. For that was the night my dearly loved best friend and sibling told me I was “crazy” and that this most beloved person was cutting off all contact with me from that moment forward. And it was done. This person also lobbied hard to convince other close relatives that I was psychotic, not ill, and not to listen to me.*

This was one of what felt like hundreds of stab wounds of varying depths of betrayal at the time. Friends I’d known for years no longer responded to my emails, former work colleagues avoided me.

Of all the “deaths,” dealt by nonpsychiatric neurological Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS/ME) and Fibromyalgia: loss of health, loss of energy and vitality, financial losses, loss of credibility, loss of work I loved; the loss of friends and family was perhaps the most devastating.

At that time, it truly was the totally unconditional love of my three children, and their calm acceptance of what was right in front of their faces, that kept me on this earth.

In his book, "When Bad Things Happen to Good People," Rabbi Harold Kushner writes,

"At some of the darkest moments of my life, some people I thought of as friends deserted me—some because they cared about me and it hurt them to see me in pain; others because I reminded them of their own vulnerability, and that was more than they could handle. But real friends overcame their discomfort, and came to sit with me. If they had no words to make me feel better, they sat in silence (much better than saying, 'You’ll get over it', or 'It’s not so bad; others have it worse') and I loved them for it."

My sibling finally re-established communication with me on my birthday a year later, but has never apologized as this person does not believe they did anything wrong or damaging; and the relationship remains distant and strained, as do many of our family relations.

And although I lost many relationships, some friends and family stuck around, not because they understood my illness, but because they loved me. Life has gone on, as it must.

I have tried to make sense of this boondoggle for years now and finally concluded that as we change and grow some relationships fade while others grow stronger. I would even venture to say that it has nothing to do with being ill, but rather is an inevitable continuum present in the lives of all of humanity.

Many people have a great deal invested in the people in their lives remaining the same so that they can remain the same. Life doesn’t work that way. Whether the changes are subtle or have the impact of a Category 5 hurricane (can you guess what part of the country I live in), we all change whether we seek it or not, whether we wish it or not.

New friends know me for who I am now and accept my limitations as part of me. Others, from my old life, are coming to see beyond these new limitations and accept that my raucous sense of humor still lives, my love of gardening and the earth is an abiding one, and that my loyalty to my friends rarely wavers.

But, they have also had to accept that in many ways I am not the person they knew when our relationships began. I like to think of myself as new and improved with sprinkles on top.

For those who cannot come to terms with my organic illness and the inevitable life changes, I wish them well as our paths diverge. But, I also leave the door open, not only to allow those who leave back in should they wish to return, but to leave wide the door letting in new friends and forms of support.

Originally posted on RemedyFind.com August 2004

- When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
                                                                -  Alexander Graham Bell.

*Addendum: At the time of our initial argument, I said, "Why don't you do your homework," and my relative replied, " I did." In 20/20 hindsight I believe that the homework was done, but because the psychiatric myths of neurasthenia are so pervasive in our society, the remarks make sense in that context even though the conclusion is not supported by the biomedical evidence.

As a professional journalist, I believe journalists must shoulder a great deal of the responsibility for the confusion. The failure of the media to differentiate between two diametrically opposed medical hypotheses is a fundamental error with severe reprocussions.

And the use of the vague, undefined term "controversial," doesn't cut it. Good grief, whether you like your toilet paper hung "over" or "under" is controversial. The elemental failure by journalists to differentiate between "mass hysteria or neurasthenia," and a biomedical disorder classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a nonpsychiatric neurological disorder under G93.3 is scandalous.

scan·dal·ous adj

    causing or deserving to cause public outrage or censure
    causing or having the potential to cause damage to somebody’s reputation