Long Distance Support

[freddiefraggles]

Almost all of my friends live over an hour's drive away from where I live so the majority of my support network (not including family) live mostly over a hundred miles away. I have a lot of close friends who live in Manchester, some in Guildford and some in Exeter where I went to university. Thanks to the amazingness of the internet and social networking, it's easy for me to keep away the feeling of being out of touch and cut off from them. It's good for me to keep up with what's going on in their lives and equally they encourage me to keep them up to date with how I'm doing and how the leg is going.

Yesterday I had a pretty painful day. We're getting to the point now where the end of the tibia is touching the top of the talus and it's starting to push, crunch, ram together. It is incredibly difficult seeing through the pain sometimes. My best friend from university, Sarah, sent me a message on Facebook last night and she has given her permission for me to publish it here because it made me laugh and took my mind off it for a while.

Dear Freddie's leg,

Thank you for supporting Freddie for all of these years. However, right now, to be honest, you are being silly and horrible and hurting her lots. I know eventually that you will come to your senses and stop hurting my friend, and I would like that to be sooner rather than later please. Freddie is a Nice Person and does not deserve to be hurt. She is a Really Useful Person, and you need to cooperate with her so that she can be as useful as can be.

If you do not cooperate then we will send Freddie lots of hugs in which you will NOT be included. So there.

Love from
Sarah (Freddie's friend)

Ps. Hello William!

Of course, being sent hugs by message or email is not the same as actually having a hug but apart from my friends being so far away, the vast majority of them cannot afford to come and visit me. My generation rents instead of buying, gets the coach instead of the train, only owns a car if totally necessary and walks everywhere possible in order to save money. My generation is, sadly, too poor to get to a different place for a day or overnight visit. So my support network is long distance, and if anyone reading this has ever had a long distance relationship with a partner, as I have had, they'll know that this can be quite difficult at times, and occasionally upsetting.

Luckily, I do have one friend who lives in a village up the road, though she commutes to London for work and will be moving back down there soon, we regularly go to the cinema at the weekends, like today! Getting out of the house for a while, without family, is quite important for my mental wellbeing. As much as I love my family, the feeling of being trapped here is much greater when I can't drive away from it at my own free will. So when I feel the cabin fever has a potential to rise, I make a point of trying to go out to the cinema or for lunch somewhere. It's quite effective but I'm constantly looking forward to being able to travel unaided.

Now I'm off to get ready to go to the cinema, we're going to see The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in 3D and I am hoping it won't make me seasick like it did when I tried to watch it a couple of weeks ago in a different multiplex.

Comments

[angelil.livejournal.com]

I know how you feel in a funny sort of way and not only because of my own LDR. Not having many/any friends here (the only way to make friends of my own age here, it seems, would be to go back to uni or take up smoking...of which I want to do neither) means that I too am increasingly reliant on the interwebs to communicate with friends. Still, hopefully some day that will change and this country will produce some other friends for me to hang out with in addition to me staying in touch with old ones :)

[freddiefraggles]

Sometimes you do have to make an effort to get new friends - maybe after all the wedding planning and the actual event you could go to some sort of club or night class or other. Luckily the language isn't a barrier for you!!