3. You Find Out Who Your Real Friends Are
Having fibromyalgia teaches you a very important lesson. It's a lesson you may not like at first, but it is a good lesson to learn: who your true friends are.
Throughout your life you will meet many people, you will make many friends. But not all of these people truly care about you and want what is best for you.
Some of them, possibly many of them, want you around for their own selfish reasons. Or there may be some who are friends with you simply out of convenience.
But when you have a chronic illness, being your friend is not convenient anymore. You will no longer be able to give and give the way you once did. You will no longer be able to do what everyone else is doing.
You will be limited in what you can do and how often you can do it. Some may not like that and choose not to put the effort into being friends with you. But you also learn who is willing to put effort into being a part of your life.
Now that I have fibromyalgia, sadly, I have little energy left for being a good friend and maintaining relationships. But now I know who is worth putting that energy towards. I have seen who has stuck with me through it all.
Personally, I would rather have three close friends, who are more like family than friends, instead of having 100 friends that do not have genuine affection for me. This can be a painful lesson to learn at first, but it does not take long at all to realize that this is really a blessing.
4. You Find A New Community
When you are first diagnosed with fibromyalgia you may feel alone, or like you’re some kind of freak. That’s how I felt, anyway. I didn’t know anyone that had fibromyalgia, everyone told me I was too young to have something like that – I thought there was something severely wrong with me to have this weird, freak illness at the age of 22. But I soon found out that was not even a little bit true.
I found that there were many other people like me, some of whom were my age or younger. Where did I find these people? Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter. There is a whole community of people that suffer from not just fibromyalgia, but just about any chronic illness imaginable.
This community supports and encourages each other and will embrace and accept you, even though they’ve never met you.
