Sometimes it feels as if I am going to go through the whole of my life without any real friends. The years of being in hospital and the years of commitment to anorexia has not allowed much room for friendships. I lost most of the friends I had and I find it very difficult making new ones.
I only really have one friend to speak off-my old friend from uni who I started seeing again last year-who I cherish. We still continue to see each other about once a month and I love meeting up with her, having a chat and a catch up. Being the only friend I have, these moments are savoured.
However, last week I hope, was the start of a rekindling of an old friendship. I went out for dinner with an old friend from school. We had kept in touch vaguely through my years in hospital but near the end of my last admission we saw a bit more of each other and continued to do so the following few years after discharge. however, for nearly three years now we hadn’t been in touch-not through any falling out, just a case of life and struggles getting in the way.
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| Me with my friend last week |
The past few months we had been in touch via text a couple of times and then last week, as I said, we went out for dinner. And I cannot tell you how nice it was. We are both quite different from the last time we met-I have come a long way these past few years and I realise that actually back then, it was probably very difficult for her to know what to say and how to act around me. but anorexia is sitting slightly smaller in my life now than it was then and I think that makes it much easier for me to socialise relatively ‘normally’.
I felt very regretful for the years I didn’t keep in touch with her but I have to accept that I cannot get that time back but I can control the future. And I hope that now we have met back up, it will be the start of a new, old friendship that can grow even stronger. That is what I want. And I have also been back in touch last week via text with a friend of ours who I lost touch with but to whom she remained good friends. Friends don’t grow on trees and now I have a few back in my life, I hope to keep them…and I won’t go through my whole life without any real friends.