False Friends and True

[There are two posts today. Next week, with G-d's help, I will be moving house, so next week's designated essay is being posted today.]

If my experience is any guide, your family will be the only “carry-over” people upon whom you can count if you have had bouts of severe mental illness. It is only the friends you make during the course of your recovery whom (speaking for myself,) I have been able to count on to be enduring—and this may be true for you as well. 

My best friend I met through work with NAMI, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (of the United States.) She is a family member of three diagnosed people. No matter how close prior friends had been to me, they all fell to the wayside as being “false” during the course of my recovery. My “true” friends outside my family never had to put up with the acutely-ill me. Thanks be to the Good L-rd, I have found a number of them.....

"A friend in need is a friend indeed." Few people other than those doing religious charity or professional clinical work will be there for you in acute illness as will be your family, and the latter will be true to you on-going.