Ok, here is a difficult truth: friendships take up a huge amount of energy and mental processing, so when you have almost no energy at all and life is very fragile, it means you can't sustain many very well.
What you have of yourself, you need to hold back to sustain self-care, maybe your work, maybe to nurture a partner/children. Often you have enough for that and nothing else, and so everyone else feels let down. You have to live with that and it sucks but it's all you have.
I'm constantly letting people down. Constantly. I hate it. And it's harder these days, if anything, because now there is an expectation of a lot of digital contact between friends too - that we'll treat friendships a bit like social media. Lots of 'likes' and interaction.
And this is before you even try spending actual time with people, which can be hugely challenging if you have a lot of pain or other symptoms that are severe and unpredictable. Try and do too much online interaction and you might have nothing left for day to day contact.
I've always had to be an arm's-reach sort of friend. I've never been able to cope with intense, heavily-involved sorts of friendships or communication, the stimulation of it or the complexity, and I really suffer when I try. I spend a lot of time feeling guilty about this.
There are lots of understandable reasons for this. My disability, my solitary nature. I've had to spend most of my life isolated with only my own company, only seeing 1 or 2 close adults a week. I'm deeply introverted and my processing disorders mean I share some autistic traits.
I've tried to make my peace with it by being a consistent, warm, supportive, undramatic person in people's lives. THAT I can do, whenever people need - like a reassuring book you can open whenever you need to exhale. I believe that's a good, rare thing to be.
I hold and think of people with a lot of love in my heart, doing little things whenever I can to let people I know I care about them but, again, the hard thing is that it's often not enough for people to feel close to you these days. People expect more and that's hard.
It's very isolating. People give up on you. They assume that maybe you're distant or don't really care, or they get frustrated and don't want to invest in what feels to them like one-sided friendships. I can understand that. People have different needs.
My few closest, safest friends let me be distant. They keep me in their circle of remembrance and belonging, knowing I'm always here if they need, that I love them and that they matter to me and that I'm doing my best. Thank god for friends like that, faithful and patient.
I guess I'm just trying to say that if you struggle to feel like a good friend, whether through illness or introversion or something else, especially in this new surge of digital contact, I see you and you're not alone. It's a hugely complex thing.
Finally, I'm slowly beginning to see that what I DO have to give really matters. It IS enough because it's all I have and I give it with an open heart. Doing it that way means I am enough, and it means you are too. I'm just sorry it's such a lonely and confusing business. x
And worth remembering, yes, this stuff is true of people with disabilities/chronic illness but MANY other people too. Parents! People grieving or with mental illness! There are lots and lots of people doing their best with very little in reserve. Let's be patient with each other.
