#spooniethings

I clipped a four panel little comic to emphasize my feelings...

As you all know, I'm chronically ill and very immunocompromised. I have to stay at home all day most days anyway. So, it's nice to feel like my existence is "cool" now. I think I'll start a blog for people about how to not go completely bonkers during excess isolation.

I've been having a really bad year (brain tumor, car failure, etc). I've longed for a term of classes at only eight credits. But unfortunately I am unable to go at that pace because of the way my financial aid works. This next term will be different. I spoke with my financial aid office and they said my scholarship won't be reduced because of the pandemic. And our first month of classes will be remotely delivered. And since my lab works with human participants, we won't be doing much research next term.

As you can see, this sets me up for a much more relaxed schedule next term. I've needed this for so long. I can finally achieve my full form as a hermit. I plan on doing lots of sleeping, art, Netflix, and work on my research.

Now I don't have to worry about when my next major medical steps take place.

I’ve been away for a bit, out camping, living life, etc. it’s been nice having a bit of a life while the Lupron works it’s magic. But something’s been nagging at me that I’ve put off sharing here, but I think it’s important because it’s one of the lesser talked about aspects of being sick. I wanna take a quick (ha) sec to talk about the friendships that don’t survive chronic illness.

Hands down, the biggest thing this illness has cost me is my ex best friend, C. We’ve been best friends since we met in seventh grade. We saw each other through divorce, relationships, some rough first years of adulthood, everything. We were each other’s prom dates and then in my third year of university, we even lived together. We shared everything, every aspect of our lives, for fifteen years.

Unfortunately, the year we were living together was also the year I was diagnosed.. One day at the end of the school year, on the week of my laparoscopy, she announced she was moving Home out of nowhere. I was disappointed, but I loved her, so I was supportive. My laparoscopy came and went, so did five rounds of assorted narcotics,as well as two unrelated arm reconstructions.

She wasn’t there for any of it. After a few months of not hearing from her, I messaged her asking where she’d been and that’s when all hell let loose, You know all the negative things people say when you’re sick? That you’re lazy, or attention seeking, or high maintenance, or dramatic? She threw all of them at me. It was never a direct “you’re sick and not fun anymore,” it’s that I was holding her back and selfish and had been self centered our whole fifteen year friendship.

Im not going to go into details here, partly because I have no idea if she’s on my Tumblr and also because it was a deeply hurtful fight for both of us that doesn’t need attention from the internet. But the short version is that, pending some horrible thing I did to her that I am unaware of, the only thing that changed in our fifteen year friendship was my health.

Being sick makes us into different people and it brings out differences in people around us we didn’t know existed. We always hear of friends who left because they couldn’t handle it, but what does that actually look like? Sometimes it’s not as obvious as someone calling you an attention whore and never inviting you to their birthday party again. Sometimes it’s subtle things, like just not responding to your texts as often, or forgetting to invite you somewhere. And we ourselves drop the ball on social connections because we don’t have the energy, or the time between appointments, or because our meds turn us into people no one wants to be around. There’s lots of valid reasons relationships become as toxic as the bodies we’re fighting.

The real pain though, for me, lies in her choice. She chose to walk away from a difficult situation, one that I can’t get away from and that I live with everyday. When faced with inescapable pain, you hope the people who love you will be there to not only help you fight, but even just answer their phone and remind you there’s more to life than feeling shitty. But unlike us, our pain is escapable for the people close to us. If they don’t want to fight, they can walk off the field. And we’re just left hoping the ones we’ve loved longest will stick it out when it gets rough.