Support

An issue I've struggled with lately is not feeling supported by my friends.

I have many good, genuine friends whom I know care a great deal about me. And yet, there have been many times during this two months since the diagnosis that I've felt isolated, alone and unsupported by many of them. I think part of the problem is that I have always put a little too much emotional emphasis on friendships. Over the years, I have realized that my devotion to friends tends to be disproportionate to that of most other people. I view my closest friends as family members, truly. I go to great lengths to help friends during dark times. While I like this aspect about myself, I'm not trying to brag. I think there is probably some deep-seated personal need I fulfill by holding friendship so dearly, so it's not like I'm a martyr.

So, the struggle I have lately is in expecting friends to act toward me in the way I would act toward them, if I found out their child had autism. But this is not fair, or right. I have friends who have gone through some very tough times--parents dying, siblings with serious mental illness, divorce. Sometimes I was a good friend during those times, sometimes I wasn't as supportive as I should have been. Everyone is in a different place at different times. I try, very hard, to remember this. It's especially hard for me to grant this grace toward friends whom I was very supportive of at a hard time in their lives, and who I feel now are not supporting me as much. But I am trying, I am trying.

I think, too, that I have so much sadness and anger about all this happening that it spills over to feeling upset with my friends, and that's not really fair, either. This anger did, however, help me to deal with some very long-standing issues with my mom. Buried, festering stuff that was 25 years old and was preventing me from feeling fully that she actually cared about me. I do feel she does, now. Yesterday, when I had a down day, it was her that I called.