Friday 19 February 2016

The Most Wonderful News - Good things DO happen to good people!!

Now before you read any further please do be reassured that this isn't the news you may think it is! We are still nowhere near that BFP (altho progress is being made....) so this is not a #pgpost and (I hope!) you shouldn't need to protect yourself from the musings in this post.

Those of you that have read my meandering thoughts for a while may be aware that I have a friend who blogs (here) about her wonderful family. It is a daring and searingly honest blog about the past two years or so since her son (their second child) was born profoundly disabled. He doesn't have an official diagnosis and, as far as they are aware, it's a genetic condition of which both her and her husband are carriers. However, after weighing up an awful lot of pros and cons they decided to have a third child - knowing full well all of the risks that that entailed.

It was not an easy decision for her and her husband to make and the past nine months have not been easy for them, however this risk has all paid off. She has found out that baby is developing as it should, all is well and it should arrive shortly. This gives me such a lovely warm feeling inside!! It is so so good to know that when one member of our friendship group is swanning off to the other side of the world to try for a genetically modified addition to her family, and for purely cosmetic reasons, that there is genuine good news for someone that deserves it so much.

Despite everything that she has been through she has always been so wonderful to us. I have written about her before, he responses to things are always incredibly humble and caring. When we first opened up about our diagnosis she was the one who apologised for 'foisting' her children on us - a silly thing to say as we love them dearly but she has empathy in spades and has always always found the time for me. In fact, she is the only one of that group of ladies that is aware of this blog and reads it. I am therefore pretty sure that as she is reading this (whenever she has the time to do so!) her face is going a rather fetching shade of red as she is the most modest person I have ever met but she so deserves this wonderful news.

I am inspired by her positivity and attitude towards the whole pregnancy, the burden that she has had to endure has been immense. I truly hope she realises how much I appreciate her friendship. She lives in the other end of the country and yet friendship is not measured by the miles, I keep in touch more with her than some from the same group who live down the road from me.

So, with a smile on my face and a renewed feeling that all is right with the world I shall plough on into the weekend..... Have a good one folks!!!

Wednesday 3 February 2016

A Cry for Help

Howdy.

Just a bit of a heads up, before you read this post it might be handy to read this post and this post. If you haven't already! As I shall refer to both of them. I'd hate to confuse you....

I've not been feeling great of late. I've been very tearful, I've not wanted to do anything at the weekend other than just lie on the sofa and I can't shake the anger that I have inside of me. I found out last month that my 'friend' was flying the next day to California for her treatment. I decided I could be the bigger person, I thought I'd be fine. I texted her to wish her a safe flight, nothing more, but I thought it was the grown up thing to do. In hindsight that was incredibly stupid. I'm not sure I will ever agree with what she's doing and, because of the type of person she is, she will never tailor her responses to anything due to our circumstances. All she needed to do was reply 'thanks hon, hope you're well' or 'that's very sweet of you thank you' - and then both of us would have carried on with our evening and there may still have been hope of resurrecting the friendship in the future. As it is, I'm doubtful we will ever be friends again. Her reply was this -

"Thanks, it's so exciting!!"

Which immediately got my back up as what she is doing is abhorrent, not exciting. I genuinely do understand that she believes it exciting and that it is something she feels she has to do. Why else would she do something that so many people take an issue with? However, how she can fail to understand how I would feel about it, bearing in mind our diagnosis, I have no idea. Well, I do. Empathy has never exactly been her strong suit..... I replied, I thought fairly politely, that exciting wasn't a word I would use to describe what she was doing and again wished her a safe flight. She then made matters worse by saying that she was therefore stumped and had no idea what I was on about. This meant, of course, that I had to put what she was doing in writing which just made it even more real to me. To cut a rather long story short she accused me of being intolerant, of being rude and of spoiling her last evening with her boys before she flew out. To top it all off I then got a message on FB from her brother telling me to mind my own business and to leave his sister alone. That was the final straw. I sat on the sofa and sobbed.

Hubby had been working a night shift this particular weekend so was asleep when all this took place. He woke up, came downstairs, took one look at me and offered to call in sick to spend the evening with me. Which was an incredibly sweet thing to do (he really is the most wonderful man) but I said to him not to, he was due to leave for work in a few hours and I would just go to bed. So there wasn't really much point! I did however deactivate my FB profile the next day. I needed time away. My usual response when I have been hurt this badly is to hide away from the world. Which is therefore what I've done (apart from you lovely folk, obviously!). Weirdly enough I'm not missing it. And not many people have noticed I've gone so maybe I'll stay away..... Who knows.

What I do know is that, for whatever reason, I just cannot let this incident go. I keep playing the conversation over and over in my head and it just makes me angry. Properly, properly, full of rage angry. To the point that, when my mum suggested that what I needed to do was take a deep breath and let it all go I replied that no - what I really needed to do was punch her in the fucking face.

This behaviour is unusual for me. I am not generally a violent person! At all. And yet the rage takes over, I cry and I just want to hit her with a brick. Shake her and make her see what an absolutely immoral and completely idiotic thing she is doing. I hope to God it fails. And then I think badly for feeling like that as I know how much she wants it to work and how it would devastate her if it did fail. I have therefore got back in touch with my counsellor who helped me so much when I was off work in 2013. I cannot let this rage consume me. I need to let this go - I have let go of her, of that much I am 200% certain. If and when I do re-join the social media world I want absolutely nothing to do with her, her husband or her brother.

The past few evenings I've not particularly felt like myself either. I would categorise them as 'Meh'. The weekend was the same (although admittedly things were not helped by the fact we spent Saturday afternoon at a 1 year old's birthday party) and I don't like it. I don't like feeling like this. So I have reached out, I have made the call. I have an appointment to see her next week and I already feel better about things just because I've made the appointment. Fingers crossed that feeling continues.