My ex-housemates and ex-friends

I felt hurt by a lot of things my ex-housemates said and did. Since writing about my mum, and other issues that were eating away at me in a journal, I've felt a bit better. So I think I have to get this out:

I think the best word to describe how I feel about my ex-housemate, P, and all his friends is "disappointed". After three years of living with me, he showed little sympathy for me when I got sick.

A few weeks after I first got sick, I was unwell still; yet P kept insisting that I looked better already. I felt like he was suggesting that I was just malingering.

And when I found out that I had CFS, he said it was good news. How can being diagnosed with a chronic condition be good news? I think he assumed it was the doctor's way of saying I was just tired.

But what really got to me was that instead of offering me some food or consolation while I was sick, he started talking about me behind my back. Every day, I heard him and A whispering about me in the kitchen.

Once, I even heard him say that he didn't want to live with me next year, because M (his girlfriend) said she didn't want to live with someone who "doesn't come downstairs for dinner". Why could they not see that I wasn't coming down to dinner because I was so fatigued, I couldn't make it down the stairs? Instead of thinking I was too sick to come downstairs, they chose to think that I was just being "odd". I'm so insulted that clearly they never believed I was sick, they just thought I was weird. Didn't they know me better than that?

It's been about nine months since we moved out of our shared house, and I haven't heard from him or any of my so-called friends once. P, J, D, M and A all know that I'm sick. And yet they haven't called me once to ask how I'm doing. Even if I wasn't sick, how can someone live with another person for three years, and then not even want to meet up with them for dinner once in nine months? It's true that I haven't called them either. But I'm the one who's sick; I don't have the time or energy to ring everyone to check up on them! I don't know if I should be happy or sad: on the one hand, I don't want to see them anyway; and on the other, I thought they were my friends, and friends would want to stay in contact.

Speaking of staying in contact, since I got sick, I haven't heard from my other friends, B and T either. I used to see B almost once a week, before I got sick. And I grew close to T (who was in my classes at uni) towards the end of my bachelor degree, to the point that we messaged each other whenever things weren't going our way, and to the point that he was one of the last people I saw before I left for my African travels. Both B and T have just disappeared.

What makes me sad is that the people who I thought had been my closest friends in the last three or four years, really weren't my friends at all. I haven't just lost my health, I've lost half of my friends, and the feeling of security that they offer. I feel foolish and embarassed from having once believed these people were my friends. And at a time when I need the support of friends and family more than ever, I've never felt more alone.