An Unapologetic Post About Letting "Friends" Go

There comes a point in some friendships where the relationship has turned toxic. It's not always easy to come to terms with this. Since getting sick, I have encountered toxic friendships many times. For a while, I ignored what these people were doing to me. I let them fool me into thinking that they were my friend, even though I truly knew that our friendship would never be like what it used to. I let those people make me suffer through over a year of loneliness. These people used to be my friends. We hung out often. But chronic illness and a wheelchair sure can scare people off. Eventually I got tired of them saying "we should hang out sometime" and then never acting on their words. So I let them go. It sounds simple, but it was one of the hardest things I've had to do in my life. Letting a friendship go requires a grieving process of sorts. There were a lot of tears and there was a lot of anger, but at some point I just deleted them from friends lists, deleted their number, and hid all pictures I had of them. These people really screwed me over, and I could finally see it. But just because I had erased them from anywhere where I could see them, it doesn't mean that they were out of my memories. Still, I reminisce about the days before NMO.

When I left for college, I was both excited and terrified about the new friendships that were about to blossom. The first two weeks at school were terrible for me. It seemed that everyone had found their "group" and I still hadn't made a real friend yet. (Little did I know, I met someone who would become one of my very best friends at orientation weekend) When I finally started making friends I felt like I was proving all of those people from home wrong. There actually are people out there who want to be friends with me, regardless of the wheelchair. By about halfway through first semester, I was friends with the group that I would end up spending a lot of time with, and eventually would consider some of my best friends. (Not the person I mentioned earlier.) So it came as a shock to me when about a month and a half ago, these people started to become very sour towards me. Nothing had changed, except for the fact that I was back in my wheelchair full time due to a severely sprained foot. But all of a sudden, they stopped talking to me and stopped wanting to do things with me. Eventually we started getting in fights relatively frequently, and I started hearing about someone talking about me behind my back. The relationships had turned toxic. I did a lot of soul searching and realized that these people were making me feel the same kind of loneliness that I felt back in high school. This was not okay with me. When I decided that there was not going to be any future in these friendships, I decided that I'd have to let them go at some point. Recognizing that I needed to let go was surprisingly easier than before. Was it because I'd gone through it before? Was it because I knew we actually had nothing in common? Was I just fooling myself? I'll probably never know. But I'm just over having friends that think it's okay to treat me like crap. It's empowering knowing that I won't take crap from anyone anymore. I deserve to be happy. And if making myself happy means letting someone (who I thought was my friend) go, then so be it.

Note: Regardless of the few people I talked about in this, I still do have some pretty amazing friends. And someday I'll have a whole blog post dedicated to them. They're some pretty incredible people. <3

November 15th.

Three years ago I went paralyzed from the neck down. I was sixteen and the happiest I had ever been in my entire life. 5 months prior, I had gotten my first job (and it actually paid above minimum wage). A month later, I passed my driving test on the first try. The beginning of the school was off to a great start; I had stellar grades, and a role in my school’s production of Romeo and Juliet. I felt invincible. But clearly, I was not. We didn’t know it at the time, or even for weeks after the fact, but I was preparing for the fight of my life. It’s only in retrospect that we can really think about how close to death I was. I believe it’s that way because when you’re so close to dying, you don’t think about death. You think about life.

The first two weeks that I was paralyzed are a complete blur in my memory, and that’s probably for a good reason. I’ve been told so many things about what I was like in those two weeks. Obviously the first thing I was was drugged. Because of this I’m not sure how much of what was happening to me was actually registering in my mind. My mom has told me that I was determined to be out of the hospital by the end of the week in time to perform in Romeo and Juliet. And when that didn’t happen I was focused on Thanksgiving, which we inevitably ended up spending in the ICU. After Thanksgiving passed, the next date was Christmas. But it no longer was my goal to be home. My only Christmas wish was that I had full use of my hands again. That also never happened, but I guess paralysis overrules the magic of Christmas miracles. It took me months to realize that I was going to be in this for the long haul. Somewhere around February, it dawned on me that I could sill be in the hospital on my birthday, April 29^th. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. (I beat it by a whole day!) But still, the realities of what I had already lost, and had yet to lose hadn’t totally sunk in yet.

If someone told me beforehand that I would lose my best friend, as well as countless other relationships, and my prime teen years, I probably would have laughed in their face. I was sixteen, just beginning my life. My best friend and I promised to always be there for each other, even fantasizing about being each other’s bridesmaids when our wedding days would come. Little did I know, my life would never be the same.

But I can’t focus on all of the bad things this disease has thrown at me, because honestly, it’s done some pretty amazing things for me. First of all, it gave me the ability to realize who my true friends are, even though it’s not fool proof. I’m still learning, even now, that some people are very good at hiding their true personality even if you’ve known them for a year. Another is that for every dead friendship, there was a brand new one waiting for me on My Devic’s Family, a wonderful group of wonderful people who share the same disease as me. They’ve all “been there, done that” and can share their experiences with me. I learn so much from them each and every day. Last week, I traveled to LA to attend a conference and meet a whole bunch of them. They’re some of the best people I’ve ever met. Being sick has also given me the ability to find beauty as well as humor in all things. It was the only thing that got me through six months in the hospital.

But most importantly, it’s taught me to love harder, to mean everything I say, and to live every day like it’s my last. There’s no time for regrets; you only get one chance.

The Frolicking Naked Women in the YMCA Locker Room

In addition to traditional physical therapy, I also do pool therapy at the YMCA. It's very effective and I enjoy floating in the water at the end of a long session. But there's one thing I'm not so fond of. The naked women who feel it's necessary to frolic around the locker room completely naked. Now, I don't mean to sound rude, but I DON'T WANT TO SEE THAT. Yes, I understand if you quickly change your clothes in the corner with your back to everyone. But when you're standing in the mirror doing your hair, hanging out in front of the fan while you dry off, or doing every single thing you need to do, while you're naked, it's a little bit much. Don't ya think?

I'm that awkward age where I'm way too old to use the girls' locker room, but I'm not as old and saggy as many of the women in in the women's locker room. I feel like there needs to be a "young adult" locker room for people that don't appreciate hanging out with naked old women.

The thing about these women I'm describing is that they have absolutely no modesty. So when they're hanging their saggy boobs out to dry by the doorway, people have to awkwardly squeeze by. But my problem is, because I'm in a wheelchair, I can't just squeeze by. Instead, I have to run face first into these women because they WON'T MOVE! It's actually quite a traumatic event for me. So when I go to pool therapy I try to spend as little time as possible in the locker room. I come already in my bathing suit, and when I get dressed, I do so in the bathroom stall.

Maybe next time I should try to use the family locker room.