What a roller coaster of a week. Between all the political brouhaha going on left, right and centre, and the sheer idiocy and chaos of Australia’s political landscape as evidenced in our mainsteam media… it’s been all up, or all down, and not a lot of in between.
So many of my friends seem to be in mourning today… our would be bright and shiny future, is somewhat less bright and shiny this morning as we contemplate the nation’s selection of a complete chicken fucking moron to: represent us on the international stage, throw welfare money at the nation’s wealthy and elite, destroy our environment and ignore the challenges of climate change, stunt our nation’s internet and technological future, destroy our rail infrastructure, treat cruelly with asylum seeking refugees and a tonne of other shit no one really wants, and a lot of people obviously haven’t really thought through! Alas, there’s nothing to be done, but just sit back and watch it all play out now… in six months time there will be nary a soul in sight who will admit to voting for the idiot, just like Campbell bloody Newman. C’est la vie.
But also sadly this week I find an familiar and decidedly ugly foe raising its head for me, yet again and much closer to home… Jealousy. A friend of Mr K’s, whom he worked closely with for the last five years has just had a third daughter. A uni friend of mine has just announced on Facebook that she’s just found out she’s having a baby and is laughingly refusing to give up coffee… and a very, very dear, and once very close, friend who is currently managing at home with her beautiful, nearly toddling, baby girl; has just announced that she 14 weeks along too. I want to congratulate them and hug them and wish them all well… and the other half of me wants to go home, scream into a pillow and stab them all in effigy, because it comes so easy for everyone else! 🙁
In all fairness my dear, once close, friend hasn’t had the easiest run to breeding either. First child took her a long time, some painful endometriosis surgeries and assisted reproductive treatments. I see myself thinking and saying, ‘once close’ friend because I know I have not been a very good friend to her these last few years at all. I was supportive when I knew she was trying to fall pregnant, and sympathetic and understanding when things weren’t working as well as they should be. But once she announced that she was having a baby, I found myself slowly and inexorably putting distance between myself her imminent happy family. I know that it is a sort of self preservation mechanism, the less involved I am, the less I end up being faced with the huge emotional time bomb that the tiny precious babies represent. And even though I know that this is hideously self involved of me, at a time when she probably really needs as much support from her friends and family as possible, I can’t seem to help myself, but retreat.
It’s the Horrid IVF Hangover. Years have passed – six or seven years since I was forced to give up – and apart from the time spent repairing the financial wreckage that long term IVF causes, and the relationship damage that IVF leaves you with… I am also left with a bitterness and jealousy that renders me completely unable to be truly happy for the people around me who are having their own gorgeous little children. Intellectually I am happy for them and I wouldn’t want anyone to go through what I went through… but somewhere deep inside, I’m still a huge bundle of pain. I have distanced myself from one of my dearest friends because I simply don’t know how to be there for her and participate in her happiness and joy, without constantly feeling the sorrow and sadness of my own losses. Such conflicting emotions never sit politely together – great happiness and relief for them, and deep sadness and grief for me.
End result is that I feel I have become the worst possible friend imaginable. Once there for the fun times, but not able to be there to share in her early motherhood trials. There in the past, but unable to reliably be there in the future. I want her to be happy. I want her to have a huge family of five or six beautiful children if that is what she wants… but more than that, I want to be genuinely happy FOR her. And for some reason, I just don’t know how to shake off all my emotional baggage in a useful way that allows me to be present and genuinely joyful for her, and with her. So instead I have found myself staying away… to spare me the constant emotional pain and her, the expressions of pity.
I feel like such a coward, but I just don’t know how to deal with my emotions and so what do I do? But continue on with the avoidance. 🙁