When You Get Sick and Watch Everybody Leave

Some seasons are quiet before they are healed.

When You Get Sick and Watch Everybody Leave

Hey, my beautiful readers! Welcome back to My Sassy Stories, where I share my life honestly, what I've experienced, how I felt, and what each season has taught me. Today I want to tell y'all about one of the hardest lessons I ever learned. It didn't come from a book. It came from a hospital bed. So let's get into today's story.

There is a kind of lonely that only shows up when your body is failing and you look around the room expecting to see somebody there.

I was sick. Doctors told me I had The lupus. They told me I would be on nine pills for the rest of my life. I had a blood transfusion. I didn't know what my life was going to look like anymore. I didn't know what surviving would even mean. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I was still trying to finish school, lying in a hospital bed doing my assignments on my phone with three IVs in my hand.

That part alone would have been enough to break me. But it wasn't even the hardest part.

Watching the Room Empty Out

The hardest part was watching everybody leave.

Family. Old friends. People who were once there. Gone.

And here's what made it hurt even more. I was the one who used to carry people. Brothers. Sisters. Cousins. Friends. I showed up. I helped. That was just who I was. So when I got sick and needed somebody to show up for me, I looked around and felt like nobody was there.

I cried. I'm not going to sit here and act like I handled that gracefully, because I didn't. I cried all night wondering why people did what they did. Why did they leave. Why wasn't I enough. Why did the people I loved hurt me like that.

If you have ever been sick, or broken, or going through something and watched the people you thought would stay just disappear, I need you to know I understand that specific kind of pain.

What God Said When Everyone Else Was Quiet

But God spoke to my heart in the middle of all that silence.

Your friends and family will come and go, but I stay.

And He was right.

He held onto me. He reminded me that I could get through it. That I was going to make it through. That this was a season. That this was a shift. Bad or good, seasons change.

After the storm, you can look up into the sky and see the sunrise. You can feel the sun shining across your eyes. And sometimes, after everything you've survived, you'll see that rainbow. A promise that God keeps.

I needed that reminder more than I needed anyone's apology.

Letting Go Wasn't About Not Loving Them

Here's what I want to say clearly, because I think this is the part people misunderstand the most.

Letting go of the people who left was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. And it wasn't because I stopped loving them. I had to let them go to heal my soul and heal myself.

That is not the same thing as not caring anymore. Sometimes love and letting go have to live in the same sentence, even when it doesn't feel fair.

I thought letting go was too hard. For a while, I believed I couldn't do it. But I did what I had to do, even when I couldn't see the meaning of it yet. Even when I couldn't see the ending.

And in the end, it paid off.

Finally Free

I thank God for everything I went through. Yes, everything. Because He saved me.

Even though it hurt to let family go. Even though it hurt to let old friends go. Here I am today, loving on myself, doing what God told me to do.

I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Him. He knew I had it in me. He knew I was strong. He knew there was still a light inside of me, even when I couldn't see it myself.

I see the woman who survived. I see the woman who fought for her health. I see the woman who kept doing her assignments from a hospital bed while everybody else went quiet. I see the woman who walked away from what was hurting her. I see the woman who learned how to love herself.

I'm finally free. I'm finally moving forward.

What I Learned

Getting sick taught me who was really there and who was only there when it was convenient. That hurt in ways I don't think I can fully explain. But it also taught me that God does not leave when people do. He stays in the room when everybody else walks out of it.

I learned that letting go doesn't mean you loved somebody less. Sometimes it means you finally loved yourself enough.

Have you ever had to let go of people who disappeared on you when you needed them the most, just so you could heal? Tell me about it in the comments. I read every single one