Friends will love you and care for you until they determine your sickness might alter or interfere with your benefit to them.
At that time, they are empowered with confidences to slash, rip, and tear, and some of them do that.
It is a rare friend who is willing to stick with you.
The ones who stick with you are the ones who truly love and truly care. We are fortunate if we find one.
stillfugue 
#1 by Wordywoman on January 16, 2011 - 11:19 pm
I have a few and I am grateful!
#2 by Carl on January 17, 2011 - 8:00 pm
This is good to hear! We have hope!
#3 by Raven on January 17, 2011 - 8:58 am
Very true. I understand this quite well.
#4 by Carl on January 17, 2011 - 8:02 pm
Thank you. I appreciate your comment.
#5 by Evelyn on January 17, 2011 - 9:14 pm
How do you really know if they are one? they could leave at any time…
#6 by Carl on January 17, 2011 - 9:53 pm
Indeed, and they could leave in a number of different ways! Sometimes, you get to see them put through a test, and the test is so severe that you are shocked that they stuck with you. Those will stick with you if they have control over it. I wish I did not have to see some get put to the test. Who needs tests in real life?
#7 by Evelyn on January 23, 2011 - 9:07 pm
Absolutely. Completely agree with you…
#8 by Marian on January 17, 2011 - 11:41 pm
kick to the gut.
#9 by Carl on January 17, 2011 - 11:48 pm
That was not very friendly of me! 🙂
#10 by heikewrites on February 23, 2012 - 5:40 am
Oh this is painful. so familiar. and i never get it. the other day i read on facebook what a great time in vienna my really good friends from germany had had. it’s in moments like that that i feel out of place, dropped. it’s an icy feeling. maybe they just didn’t have time to meet, or couldn’t find my number, or ….
but i have more than one friend and feel lucky. and they’ve gone out of their ways to come to vienna to be together, which is *amazing* and i love being together. but it took time. and i try not to expect so much. my husband is a good (and always thoughtful, polite) sounding board and i don’t have such a loose gob anymore thanks to him. almost all the talking i do about myself is on my blog these days — it’s become a way of outsourcing the strong stuff and “22 hits a day” tells me that it must be strong stuff. no one wants to hear me suffer or get sucked into a black hole. but a lot of the time i don’t have it in me to be a source of strength for others or to write anything that might inspire. i’ve stopped trying so hard (to please, to say what i think people might want to hear). i’ve become calmer in my heart about it. it is what it is and i am slowly beginning to consider to accept that.