maybe not such a good friend

I've been something of a nonentity online lately. I felt like all I'd be doing when I posted was whine, and bitch, and moan, so I just didn't say anything. There's only so much you can say before you start repeating yourself, right? I felt like a broken record.

Still do.

That friend who was there for me throughout MY EPIC FAIL... well, suddenly she's not seeming like such a great friend. I've mentioned her shenanigans before: now that she's pregnant, it's all she's capable of talking about. And it hurts, oh does it hurt. I told her, I can't even pass the infant department in stores anymore without struggling against tears. So she shows me the crib she's going buy. Seriously, who does that? It's just brutal.

So I'm sitting at my computer, trying to keep it all in because Sid is sitting at his computer right behind me, and she starts sending me a metric shitton of her ultrasound pictures. I downloaded them and put them right in my Recycle Bin, didn't even look at them. She said, "does that look like a girl to you?" and I said I didn't know, rather than tell her I hadn't even given them a glance. She wouldn't have taken the hint anyway.

When she started linking to pictures of the babies born at the hospital she's having her sprog at, saying "they're so ugly, I don't want an ugly baby!" I lost my shit. I told her I had to go and logged off of Yahoo Messenger. For the record, those babies weren't ugly, at least to me. Then again, my expectations throughout this entire clusterfuck have gotten progressively lower and lower: at this point I just want a child to call my own, I don't give a good goddamn what gender it might be, what it looks like, anything like that. It's pathetic and desperate, but she of all people should fucking know what that feels like, considering she's been there her goddamn self.

WHY DO I PUT UP WITH THIS? I keep telling myself that eventually it will be easier, that it cannot possibly hurt this much, and be this difficult, FOREVER. But so far, nothing is getting easier. I still cry every time I talk to her, every damn thing she says cuts right to the quick.

I ranted to Sid about it, and he said he understood, then proceeded to call me a bitch. He was joking, but that showed me that he truly didn't get it at all. As I've said before, sometimes I just want to hear someone close to me tell me I'm NOT crazy, I'm NOT a bitch. I can't talk to anyone about this, only Sid, and even he doesn't get it.

I know this is normal, to feel as though you are the only person in the world who is struggling like this. I know that no matter what I tell myself, or what Sid says, I am not crazy, I am not a bitch, I am not the only woman feeling like she is going to come apart at the fucking seams. But, god, it feels like I am.

because I am a masochist

So, give or take a few weeks, it's been about eight months since Sid and I first started trying for a sprog. EIGHT MONTHS. I realized the other day that a woman I know has gotten pregnant TWICE in the time that Sid and I have been at this. TWICE, I SAY (one blighted ovum that ended in a D&C, and the other she just found out about). And yet for me it's just month after month of failure.

And I know, without doubt, every month when I'm waiting for Miss P, that she's going to show. Because, to use the vernacular, "that's how she do." And yet, every month I get my hopes up and think "maybe this time, THAT'S HOW SHE DON'T!" Yeah, positive thinking changes lives, people. Surely it does. Just not mine. Because I can almost make myself believe it, and then the inevitable happens. And you know what? IT SUCKS.

Sid apologized the other day, and it was funny and heartbreaking all at once. He said, "I'm sorry you have to go through that every month." And I was like "what, the cramps? BITCH, THAT'S NOTHING." Because while I do get the cramps from Hell (I can't even urinate without pain sometimes when it's truly bad), it's nothing compared to the emotional wreckage I'm left with.

And doesn't that sound emo as hell?

Seriously though, emotionally, it's just harder to deal with. I can take a couple Motrin to blunt the physical pain of the cramps. And I can take a long hot bath while I wait for the pills to work. I can't really do that to stop the anger, the sadness, the frustration. There's nothing I have on hand to stop that elastic band that tightens up under my ribs and makes it hard to breathe when I think maybe it's just never going to happen.

I got Miss P this weekend (oh, joy!), and I seriously could not tell you what I did with myself besides piss off Sid. We argued to the point where I just wanted to bust his chops. I wanted to ask him when would enough be enough, when would he finally decide that it's not going to happen to us like it does for other couples? When will he finally throw in the fucking towel and concede defeat? When will it be time to seek outside help? But it's not a discussion I want to have while we're angry. I'm a bitch, but I'm not stupid: Once I'm done fucking around with my menstrual cup, and we've both cooled off (give it a few days on both counts) I'll be ready to initiate that conversation, and I assure you I won't word it like I did here.

I've asked him before, and he said, "yeah, I need to make an appointment for that" and then he never did it. I DON'T WANT TO BE A NAG. I don't want to be the woman who alienates her husband by demanding "GIVE ME A BABY, NOW!" because that shit never turns out well. But for fuck's sake, enough is enough. I want a resolution to this one way or the other.

zombie kitty

The weather was beautiful this weekend: hot enough to make me sweat, sunny enough to give me sunburn. I helped Sid change the oil in our cars, and when we were finished, up came Zombie Kitty.

He was a big old fat thing, all bushy orange fur and light green eyes. Someone loved him: his fur was clean and no stray gets that huge eating out of trashcans. And he looked just like the cat I had for sixteen years. He looked just like Whiskers. And Zombie Kitty ran right up to me like he knew me, meowing and waving his tail, licking my feet and hands to taste the sweat, rubbing all over me. For just one second, I could make myself believe that it was Whiskers.

Sid left to drop off the old oil at the auto parts place down the street and left me sitting in the driveway with this ginger impostor, and the more time I spent with him, the more I realized that he didn't look anything like my Old Man at all. He was smaller, still every bit as fat maybe, but Whiskers was big all over and not just in his belly. Zombie Kitty didn't have the tufts of hair on the tips of his ears like Whiskers did. His eyes weren't quite the same shade of yellow-green as I remembered. The resemblance was uncanny, yes, but not exact.

I was so glad that Sid wasn't around to see me cry. I wasn't sad, exactly, so I don't know what the tears were about, but it was wonderful to be reminded of Whiskers. Sometimes I feel like I'm forgetting him.

And then Gee will do something stupid, like act all brokenhearted because we wouldn't turn on the faucet so he could play in the water, and I'm reminded of the Old Man again. He's a zombie kitty, too, just not in looks.

monsters

The internet friend who stuck by me through the whole EPIC FAIL thing got pregnant five months ago. I mentioned it before. And she pretty much disappeared after that: we didn't talk anymore: not on IM, not on chatboxes, not through email. I felt like she was avoiding me. I for damn sure was trying to avoid her (at least some of the time) because I just couldn't handle the inevitable talk about her pregnancy.

Turns out, I still can't handle it. It's been five months, and she's recently reached out to me and wanted to initiate conversation again, so I'm trying my best to reciprocate. I want to talk to her. I want to have conversations like we used to. But she gets to talking about her pregnancy, just like I thought she would, and it always ends with me just breaking down. Full on sobbing as I type, barely able to read the words on the screen bawling.

Maybe I'm being too hard on myself, but I feel like this is something I should have moved past by now. I think it's pretty stupid of me to be carrying on this way, but then again, I can't help the way I feel. I don't know if she's doing it intentionally or what, but it's pretty fucking unbearable: I've been shielding her from long rants about my situation, so maybe she could lay off bitching about her backaches for a little bit? Christ, you don't see me telling her all about how SHE'S MAKING ME CRY, after all. Complaining about how the baby is kicking and it hurts, telling me all about how her fiance is being so sweet to her.

That's the worst part, actually. Because the other week as I was cleaning the catboxes, I realized that Sid hadn't helped with that since his first shitty semen analysis. He used to scoop the litterboxes "just in case", because of the risk of toxoplasmosis. Usually it was my chore, but he started doing it without my asking. And then as soon as he realized that it probably was just a waste of his time, that there was no use in doing it "just in case" because there was basically no fucking hope of me being pregnant, it became my chore again.

And that just galls me. It was like I wasn't special anymore, that because there was little hope of me making a baby out of his dudely seed, I lost all esteem in his eyes. He didn't have to kiss ass anymore. I mentioned it to him and he got so angry... so angry.

I hate what this is doing to us, what it's turning us into.

"Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche