Open and Honest

I need a minute to be honest with myself and, by proxy, you all.

I just signed up for facebook. Of course I spent way too much time doing that, adding friends and my own info, but I'm grateful to have had a couple hours to do that. That also means that I go through and catch up on what people are up to. Undoubtedly I catch myself comparing lives, which, of course shouldn't be. Sometimes I think MAN! They've never grown up! Or, I think...how did they end up there? Or, whatever.

What I've noticed when I do this (it happens anytime I find a way to catch up with old friends) that I have different reactions to different people who are in the same experience. I've noticed that I have a STRONG reaction to certain people with many kids. Not all people with kids, just some. I look at certain people and I get so angry and bitter that they have more kids than I do. Of course, I am extremely happy for others with many kids. It's strange.

I've known for a while that seeing people with infertility or challenged fertility who get pregnant and have a baby somehow makes me really happy. When I see friends who have been trying and experienced the heartache for a while and know what its like, when they have their children (either biological or otherwise), I rejoice with them as if I were having my own. I cry, I'm ecstatic, I praise God for them and their kids.

Then there are those who have children easily that I can also rejoice with.

But then there are others, who, when i find they are pregnant, or in the case of Facebook when I see them a few years later and find they've had kiddos a plenty and are "so proud" of their kids and have such "beautiful families"...it stirs up this anger inside me and I get really bitter. I think I've realized that it tends to be caused by a couple things:
1. Friends who have had kids on the schedule I wanted to have them and are completely ignorant to the fact that people have problems doing that and how blessed they really are.
2. Friends that growing up or as young adults I fully expected to be close to when they had their kids and I'm finding out about them through facebook.

When these two are combined, it makes it worse. So then I have a few friends that we were really close to in CA that now are working on their 2nd or 3rd kid and we have never really heard about any of them and it stings. Not only because they are having kids so easily, but also because we were "supposed" to share these experiences and because we aren't in the same area and because of our challenged fertility we aren't sharing in it.

I know...it's jealousy, plain and simple. There is no excuse for it, and I hate it. I experience this hatred and anger towards people I would otherwise love and have great respect for, all because they have something I don't...namely, babies and a relationship with them...and in reality this anger is just masking the tears I want to cry for being so hurt...hurt that I can't have babies as easy as them. Hurt because the dreams I had have been forced to change. Hurt because they haven't felt it important to keep a relationship with us...there lives are moving on without us.

I know this sounds so childish and silly and I sound like I'm whining again. I know that all that is true. But I also know that when I share these feelings here that I'm better able to get it out of me and work through my thoughts and feelings and emotions on it all.

Thanks for being my ear.