Tricky

I have a friend . . . or maybe had a friend.  I don't know how I would classify our relationship now.    She got pregnant randomly with a guy who she was on again off again with.  The news of the baby changed everything.  They were all of a sudden back together, getting married, having a baby and living the happy perfect little life me and the Mister had been yearning for for years.  Years.  

I know they were in shock with the news of their new little person.  I get that.  But there were talks of abortion.  Jokes of putting it up for adoption.  Complaints of how hard life was now that she was pregnant - from both parties.  It sucked.  It hurt.  Here were people who were our very, very best couple friends and every single time we hung out with them, there was complaining and woe is me'ing.

They knew our situation.  I even put myself out there and told her EVERYTHING.  I said how hard it was for me to hear them talk about how this wasn't what they wanted.  But it didn't get better.  Rather than being excited to hang out with our friends, I began to dread it.  I would spend the entire drive home from their place in tears.  It hurt to hear all of this again and again.   It hurt even after the baby was born and majority of the conversation was filled with the normal new parent complaints - but I would have given anything to trade spots with them.   It really, really hurt.  It hurt to hear, but I think it hurt because it was coming from people who were supposed to be our best friends.  But they never stopped to think about what they were saying and how it was impacting both me and the Mister.  Because let's be very clear, I was not the only one impacted by the things that were said.  

I put up walls.  The Mister doesn't.  It's a trait of his I admire more than anything, a trait I pray our little koala inherits from it's papa.  Putting up walls, it's what I do.  I avoid situations where I have to be around them.  And as a result, we don't have a relationship anymore.  The Mister still hangs out with them from time to time.  But I don't.  

My actions have probably burned that bridge.  And it sucks.  I am not proud of it  I take responsibility for it.  I pay for it when I am uninvited to their house and am left off of invitations.  I should have done things differently.   I wish I was stronger.  I wish I had thicker skin.  I wish I could let what people say just roll off my back rather than internalizing it.  I wish I didn't have such high standards for others.  I wish I was able to put my walls back down.  I wish I didn't expect people to know what to say and what not to say to people struggling with infertility.  They don't and why would they?  Infertility isn't something that is openly discussed.  Ever.

Today I was stumbling around Pinterest, taking it easy after IUI Round Two and I found this blog entry.  It takes everything I want people to know and puts it into words in a way that I can't.  Maybe if I had found this earlier and wasn't so quick to put up my walls this would have helped and I still would have my friend.