A (online), B and E. I’ve been struggling to heal a really bad rib injury for about three years now. At the same time I got my rib injury, I got extremely sick in general with a wide range of symptoms that baffled doctors (was checked for Lupus three different times, checked for stroke, brain tumors, MS was brought up, etc), but nothing was ever figured out. Thankfully, my health has improved significantly within the last year.
But before that, very few people in my life understood exactly how bad it was because it was all basically invisible, except rare times I would allow people to be around me during what I called an “episode”, and then they’d get an idea because they could see how bad of shape I was in.
But, I stopped talking to a lot of people. Partially because I had to because it stopped my life in its tracks. Doing most things became impossible. I also stopped taking to a lot of people because a large number of them didn’t even try to understand and that became angry with me. Accused me of making excuses to avoid seeing them and all kinds of things. It was very difficult.
Now, I just focus on myself and doing whatever it takes to get healthy. It’s the best thing I can do for myself. I have no desire to explain things over and over to people who most likely won’t care or even try to understand why I can’t always be the most accommodating and/or spontaneous friend in the world.