Post #50: I'm always rock

Yeah this is pretty much how all of my conversations start

This weekend I went to a bbq, and ate boiled potatoes while everyone else ate juicy ribs shellacked in a spicy sauce, arranging the spent bones on their plates like desert rainbows. There was a bright, fresh salad with nasturtium blossoms, and plum cobbler for dessert. I sat in the smoky light of a citronella candle in a tin pot, drinking seltzer and clinking my glass with everyone as the wine caused the other guests to make increasingly off color toasts. By the end of the meal, everyone was kind of leaning against each other in the slight chill of darkness, resting foreheads on shoulders in the kind of easy camaraderie that comes from longtime friendship. It was pretty perfect, except for the nausea and the way the potatoes inexplicably coalesced into a painful knot in my stomach. The Crohn's holiday is over.
 
This is how Crohn's is, sometimes-the tear at the edge of an otherwise lovely photograph, the DVD that skips during the most important scene, the beautifully frosted cake where you forgot to add the baking soda, or added too much. Just a touch of wrong in an otherwise pretty scene.
 
At the end of the night, when we were all standing in the dark street, gossiping and laughing and delaying departure as much as possible, one of my friends gathered me into a bear hug, and invited me to come visit him and his wife at their vacation house, about an hour away from my own. "Just come." he whispered, while the others lingered and laughed at a picture on someones cell phone. "Just get in the car and do it. We'd love to see you." I leaned in, and looked up, and whispered back, "I'll come if I can. You know I want to see you guys too." "I know. I know."
 
He let go.
 
I felt old and sad then, the evening's magic departing. What I said wasn't exactly true; what he said wasn't exactly true, either. I could go, even though my AAC is unpredictable; the vacation house is on a country highway, so it's not like there is a shortage of 7-11s on the way. He said he knew that my intentions were good, but in the back of his mind, perhaps the excuses were growing thin. We tell lies to our friends sometimes, to preserve the relationship. What I really should have said was that I don't feel like going anywhere, that being sick all the time makes me bitchy and anxious and party-averse. What I think he wanted to say was that I should suck it up a little and demonstrate that the friendship was important by showing my face.
 
This is what I like to think of as friendship rock-paper-scissors. Friendship requires a delicate balance of give and take. You need support, and you want to give it. You pick up the check one week, your friend picks it up the next. You are required to listen to a 3 hr. discourse about your friend's ex, who she saw at Whole Foods; in turn, she will read and re-read the bitchy email your boss sent you (which you immediately forwarded to her) and pick apart the secret meanings behind the words. In the game of rock-paper-scissors, sometimes one person wins, but mostly you are both rock.
 
Sometimes, however, there is a disconnect in the relationship. There are situations that automatically win. A head cold beats movie night. A broken car beats happy hour. Sleeping in (after a 70 hour work week) always beats brunch. And lately, it seems like Crohn's beats everything. Weddings, birthday parties, trips to the vacation house-you can play rock-paper-scissors as much as you want, but it's just for show. You're the asshole who yells, "grenade!" and ruins the whole tradition (what, they didn't do that in your grade school?). You're taking yourself out of the equation, because you-your illness-trumps it all.
 
I want to be rock, I really do. I want to "take one for the team" sometimes, and I want to play fair. But it's hard to play fair when you are so preoccupied with the day to day realities of this disease. A good friend makes plans, and honors commitments, and goes to the fucking vacation house, and I am just not a good friend right now. I can't be.

Hopefully, someday, I can see the vacation house for what it is-an excuse to sit in the sun with my feet in the water, hanging out with people I enjoy. For now, it seems like an anxiety producing, stressful situation with too many unpredictable outcomes and the potential for pain, embarrassment, and discomfort. I hope my friends understand that it's really not about them. I hope they can be patient. And when I'm feeling better, I promise to be rock even when I know they'll be playing paper.