Friends in Low Places

I have so many things to write about, its just plain silly that I haven’t posted lately.

Sometimes, after a cycle craps out, I just get to this place. Its like the deep dark pit of no return. Ok – who am I kidding? After every cycle failure, and moreso – after all of my miscarriages, I go to this place. Not sometimes. EVERY time.

And every time, it seems to get worse. It takes me longer to climb out of it, to remember who I am again. It’s often a very difficult time for T and I, and this time is no exception. In fact, I think this is the worst its been so far – in the five years we’ve been walking down this road together.

But that’s not what I intended to write about today. Actually, I wanted to talk about how isolated I feel these days. This five years has been long and hard. Its been tough on me, and T no doubt, but truthfully what I’ve been turning over in my head the past couple of weeks is how its been devastating to the majority of my friendships. I read around the internets about women who either have infertile friends in real-life, ones who really "get-it." Also, I’ve read about bloggers who have real-life friends that, while they have not experienced infertility themselves, find ways to try and comprehend, or at the very least remain supportive and helpful even in the worst of times.

I have to admit posts like that make me jealous – because I really don’t have much, if any of those friends in my circle.

Some of the drifting apart is understandable. Most of my friends are married, and in the past 2-3 years, all of them have been pumping out kids. I usually don’t go to the gatherings where all the kids are in attendance, and they never have adult-only get-togethers. In addition, all of them at one time or another have proven through words and actions that they either don’t care about our plight, or that it makes them so uncomfortable that they can't deal with it. All of this just left me feeling empty or upset or angry – over and over again, every time it happened. So I just stopped. No emails, no calls, no get-togethers. Polite conversation when we see each other. Nothing more. And I’ve finally gotten to the place where it doesn’t bother me.

Then, there’s J. J has been a friend for years. While we were close and had fun hanging out when we were young and wild (well, wild for me anyway), things have been more complicated with J since I got married. She is still immature, acting like she’s in college even though she’s older than me. She mismanages her money, lives beyond her means in a tiny Manhattan apartment, and hasn’t had a serious relationship since high school.

But we continue to do this dance around one another, trying to pretend we’re still friends. We’ve had some difficult conversations in the last year or two – ones where I have confronted her about one thing or another, but we’ve survived. She’s always maintained that despite our obvious lifestyle differences, she wants to stay friends.

BUT.

During my pregnancies, my miscarriages, my IVF cycles over the years, she’s shown less and less of an interest in what happened, how it’s going, how I am dealing, etc. I mean, we’ve gotten to the point where we lately, we only chat about it occasionally via IM. No in-person discussions, no phone calls. It really bugs me.

Flash forward to this latest cycle. As I’ve written about here, we decided to take a shot at using a sperm donor to fertilize half my eggs and see if that created better quality embryos than last time. J and I, discussing this over IM, had the following conversation:

J: So you’re using the sperm donor this time?

S: Yeah.

J: What’s he like?

S: Ummm.

S: He has a PhD. in Geology.

J: Oh, so he’s a dork LOL

I signed off. I was mad. I KNOW this was a joke, and I doubt she had any intent of being hurtful. But hell – WHY would you joke about such a thing? The fact that T and I had even come to this option, that we were considering it…the drama that went into picking another man to be a biological part of our children. NOT. FUNNY.

From that point forward, I blocked her ID from my AIM. Weeks went by – all while I was going through the cycle. Nothing. No e-mails, no calls, nothing. Egg retrieval and then embryo transfer came and went. A couple days into the 2ww, I get a text message on my cell phone: "thinking of ya." WHAT IS THAT? Like I’m supposed to believe that was a genuine expression of concern or support? I ignored it. Finally a few days after we got the negative result, she sent me an email that essentially said she hadn’t heard from me, assumed things hadn't gone well and that I’m just taking my time, but she’s "hear (sic) for me." Again, I was flummoxed. Why wouldn’t she call? Just to check in? She covers this topic in an email? And she doesn’t even know my test was negative at this point, she’s just assuming?

Needless to say, I ignored it again. Later that week I shared with a mutual friend that the cycle didn’t work and we were heartbroken. I know he subsequently told her. She ended up calling me almost a week later, while I was away at my leadership retreat.  I emailed quickly to say I was away to which she replied: "joy."  And then came her email again a couple weeks later: "Hello?"

In any case, I couldn’t deal with her on top of all the other emotional bulk, so I just ignored it all. She finally called me at work one day (where she knows I can’t talk – I work in cubicle land) after a week or two and left a message that could be interpreted as hostile. She basically said she hadn’t heard from me, and to at least call and get in touch, she ‘gets it’ if I am laying low, but she wants to be "here for me."

I thought about it for a few days and eventually decided to email. I wanted to talk to her about everything, get it out on the table, but not over the phone. I conveniently was going to be in NYC that week for a meeting, so I suggested we get together, making evident I needed to talk to her about a couple things – implication being I’m angry or upset or something. This commences an email string where she lets me know she can’t make it that night because she has some community response training class to go to (like she couldn’t skip or try to get out a tad early?) and offers to meet me for lunch. I had already said I was in an all day meeting, so lunch was not an option, and couldn’t stay late (she wanted to meet at 10pm) etc. Well the end result is this statement from her "oh well, maybe next time I’m at my parents."

Her parents live about an hour from me, and she goes there for the weekend occasionally. I was stunned. I mean, could she be any more non-committal? Make it clearer she doesn’t REALLY want to sit down and have a tough conversation with me?

Ugh, just ugh. Why do people have so many issues that end up being my problem?  Where have all the normal people gone?

So I let the email go. I didn’t reply. I don’t know what else to do. I’m trying to find a way in my mind to get some kind of closure to it – to not be so upset about it, not to reflect on the whole situation all the time. All it does is bring me sadness. But I can’t. I keep reviewing the whole thing in my head - the past couple years of our drifting apart, trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do next, how I’m supposed to move off this spot.

I suppose writing this is part of it; I’m trying to find a way to get it out of me and onto something else. Put it out there, out of my head where I just keep turning it over and looking at it, to look at it more objectively.

If anyone is still reading, you deserve a shout-out for hanging in there with me…

I’m planning on writing more over the weekend more specific to the next part of our IF journey. And oh yeah, stay tuned for an uplifting post about my depression.

Comments

[Jan]

Such a familiar story to me. Infertility ranks up there with chronic illness as a friendship killer. I try to remind myself that if I weren't the one who'd been infertile and had miscarriages, I might not get it too. I've got a couple of friends who I've made through the infertility/miscarriage situation and they're really the only ones who truly understand. Even my own sister, who had two years of infertility and then a miscarriage before her two kids doesn't really get it any more - that part of her life has faded. Most we can hope for is that those friends who don't get it hang around and are there for the other bits of our lives. For the hard stuff, we need the internet ;-).

[CAB]

Ok, so I really felt sorry for your friend when I read this. I mean, I understand your position, but I can see myself saying the wrong thing, thinking I was being funny and/or light hearted. Then not knowing how to respond to you. She was probably scared to call you. That doesn't excuse it, but I can understand it.

If this friendship is valuable to you, I think you should call her and talk over the phone. Just tell her that you were hurt b/c the decision to have a sperm donor was so hard on the two of you. But that you know she meant it as a joke. It just wasn't funny to you.

If she is important to you, you should not let this friendship go. Not over a misunderstanding. And not over someone not calling. You didn't call or e-mail either.

[HeidiM]

Just wanted to say hi. I found your site because I was trying to find other women who have done multiple IVFs. I'm on my third and it's hard to relate to people who are still on #1.

I hung in for your whole post. =) I can relate. One by one I "lost" my friends to their children. There were 3 childless left last year and now down to two. One of those two has become very self-involved. With all of them, I've basically just lowered my expectations, thrown myself into my work, and spent more time with my husband.

I haven't had to deal with blatant rudeness, though. Sounds like you got some good advice from Flicka. If you don't feel inclined to reach back out to this friend of yours, seems cool to me, I'm all for trusting your instincts.

[M]

I'm very sorry that you've lost what should have been a good friend because she's too interested in herself to be there for you. I hope that you can find a closer friend, IRL, who will truly be there for you no matter what.

[Flicka]

I'm so sorry hon. I wish you lived near me IRL--I would bring you into my posse so quick and they would all love on you. I really, really wish that for you: some friends who are willing to respect your pain and take you just as you are, where you are. That's what friendship should be about.

It sounds like the friend you mentioned is pretty self-absorbed. Myabe it's best if you just let her continue to be so. She's really out of touch with your pain and you don't feel a lot of connection with her lifetsyle. It might be time to let that relationship go, especially since it's stressing you out so much. I don't know. Your call, I don't want to give you assvice.

Hang in there, sweetheart. I know that things are really dark. Picture me with my arm around your shoulder right now, lighting the way with my tiny Zippo. I'm with you.