A Different Kind of Safety Net

     One of the toughest and most painful lessons you learn about having a chronic illness is who your real friends are.  It's one thing when you have a job that requires extensive hours, when you're married and have children to raise, or when you hit hard financial times and don't have the money to go out all the time.  You still manage to keep in touch with your friends though the chaos, find the occasional night off to hang out, date nights with other couples, BBQ's, find a babysitter to go out with friends, or become creative to find inexpensive or free excursions to stay in touch with friends.  But it's totally different with chronic illness, regardless of budgets.  You make plans, but you cancel them at the last minute because you are either far too fatigued, don't feel well enough, or you're in too much pain to hide it from anyone.  Your "friends" know you're sick, but most don't understand because you don't look it.  Unless you have some disfiguring illness, or have something that is more easily understood such as cancer.  (I just mention cancer as an example only because there are so many fundraisers to help fund research and find a cure, almost everyone has known someone who has had it, and it is a very public illness that gains a lot of attention and no decent human being is going to turn their back on a friend or family member with it.)  Except you quickly begin to realize who your true friends are.  Those are the ones who stick around through all the "maybes," the last second cancellations, they're the ones who may not understand how you're feeling or why you don't look sick, but still ask questions to try to understand what you're going through.  And if you have a diagnosis, they ask you about your disease.  Some even go online to learn about it.  But they don't turn their backs.  And they don't leave you, no matter what.
      I've been blessed with a few of these people.  I have two I consider sisters--A-- (an inside joke--she knows who she is), and Gena.  Alie has been around for 23 years, Gena for 13.  Like any best friends, we lose contact for awhile because of life, but when we do reconnect, after a brief catch up, it's like no time has passed.  I have some with whom I am very close with that I also consider family--Terry, Chris, Shawna, Adam, and a few others.  Then there are others I am friends with, some closer than others, but I'm not sure I can imagine my life without--Caitlin, Dan, both Jasons, Helen, Jess, Michael, and too many others to mention.  And I can't forget those who inspire me--my Babci, my grandfathers, grandmother, Cassandra, Burly Man, and a list too long to continue, but I wouldn't be here without them.  But I have to bring up at least two, as they are my rocks--my mother and my Aunt Sharon.  My mother and I have been each others' rocks over the last few years, while my Aunt has been the voice of reason.  She's been almost like a second mom to me growing up.
      When I think about all that I've been through--especially the past few years--I'm not sure if I would have made it without having so many awesome people in my life.  Some I bare everything to, knowing that anything I say will never leave them.  And the same thing goes to anything I'm told.  Others, I don't even have to say a word to.  We just have many common life experiences to tie us together that we become unspoken support systems for each other.  It is through this process, we form a safety net for each other.  These people have become mine.  No matter how bad things might get, no matter how tough they are, or how far I fall, I know I will never reach that bottom again because of them.  And even in the darkest of nights, there are their invisible hands there to help me up without me having to ask.  Because that's what true friends do.  We support each other.  We listen, we help, encourage, cheer on, cheer up, laugh with each other (sometimes at each other), cry with each other.  We're there.  No matter what.  And that's a feeling that no one or nothing can ever replace.  Most people take this for granted the same way they take the simplest of things for granted until it's gone.  My friendships, even though the closest ones are few, are one of many things I have learned to not only not take for granted, but to grateful, appreciative, and to cherish them as much as I cherish those individual lives that make up those friendships.  And just like the rest of my family, I would give anything and everything that I am for anyone of my friends to help them out.