Nobody Likes a Debbie Downer - Awareness Week Blog by Kimberly Parker

In any relationship, there always comes a time when you say to yourself, am
I doing something wrong, is there something extra that I should be doing to
satisfy the other party or I wonder what this person thinks of me? Whether
its a friend, co-worker, family member or spouse, the deeper you go into the
relationship, the more the anxiety and paranoia increases and you start to
believe that the other party is tired of you. Or...maybe that is just me.

The life I had before I got sick (which I refer to as fun kim times) was
just as you read it...fun. While I didn't consider myself to be the life of
the party, I was always able to have a good time. I was always out with
friends, doing what college students do best and had no complaints about it.
MAN, do I miss those times. As soon as I started to get sick I felt as
though the people that were closest to me were getting bored with me. No
longer was I able to go out and be the fun person everyone knew me as. My
days and nights were consumed with me being in pain, lying in bed crying.
And as they say, nobody likes a debbie downer.

The longer I stayed sick, the less friends I had. So maybe I thought, if I
explain to them exactly what is going on, maybe that will put me back on the
fast track to friendship. I started to be honest with people and tell them
what was wrong with me and many people understood and offered to help and of
course others just scurried along as if I had asked them to carry my first
born child. The ones who stayed, only were there for a brief moment. Then it
came to me...Maybe I needed too much help? Trips to the doctor, and to the
ER in the middle of the night are not on a college students personal
agenda. At one point in time, I felt that I was doing something wrong. That
my sickness, was annoying people, that I was being too much of a burden to
them.

That was exactly the case...and it hurt. Now that I am a college graduate
and the people who were there and not there are long gone, I do have a few
good relationships. People who were able to put up with all of my extra
baggage for an extended period of time. They call and text me, send me
messages on facebook and always say that they love all of me, both the fun
kim and the kim who has a illness. I am so grateful for the living
relationships but always think of what my life would have been like if the
people from the dying relationships would have stuck around.

But now its time to stop living in the past and focus on my life in the
present and the future. Maybe it will be filled with many more relationships
than before!