Another woman's sorrow...

Right now my friend K is going through a divorce. We all saw it coming, even before she got married, except her. She's not prepared for this, while her husband is well stocked with expensive lawyers and a list of complaints and accusations, all of them based on an exaggeration of reality, while she aimed from the beginning towards a "friendly" divorce... Is there such a thing?

The kid's at risk of ending up with a chauvinistic father who will teach him to hate all women, especially his own mother, and treat them all as dogs. With the added irony of my friend paying for child support.

I know my friend needs me, but I am spent. No matter what I say, I don't understand. I'm not a mother. I did not end up with a lunatic incapable of any empathy, and I don't  have to send money back home to my parents or to a sick sibling,  I don't have to pay for daycare and a separate rent after moving out from an abusive household, and on top of that find a way to pay for expensive lawyers. I've no idea what she needs from me at this point, except listening and saying how sorry I am.

And deep inside me, a perverse voice tells me to cheer up because at least I was spared all those horrors.

I feel terrible.

Telenovelas

This week I was mostly sick in bed with a bad cold. I ended up with my email account open, which resulted in a few friends inviting me to chats. These I gladly accepted because I wanted to catch up with them.

And all the conversations sounded like the convoluted plots of the stupid telenovelas I always hated. It does not help that all conversations were in Spanish.

• L broke up with his girlfriend of five years, because she finally told him she does not want to have kids with him (she has kids from a previous marriage).
• K is still unsure on whether she should divorce, though it is clear she and her husband do not love each other anymore. She feels staying together is what is best for their son.
• M is still fighting for full custody of three kids that treat her like sh*t, have no respect for her and do insulting things that no mother should tolerate.

It all made me think that we all want kids for different reasons, and are willing to do really illogical things for the sake of those kids (ending what was otherwise a good relationship, staying in an awful relationship, going broke in lawyer fees and tolerating horrible teenager behavior).

As for me, complaining about the torture of  artificial hormones, scheduled sex and having stuff shoved up my vagina, all for nothing... do I also sound like a stupid telenovela to them?

Someone like me

Conversation with a friend who is also foreign, speaks a different language than mine and has an entirely different accent from mine:

Me: The squirrels ate all my zucchini.
Friend: You need to get them at night. That's what I do in my garden.
Me: Huh? How?
Friend: Well, they usually come out at night, so I go find them with a flashlight, pick them up by hand and throw them in the trash.
Me: .....
Friend (helpfully): You can wear gloves, if they're too disgusting.
Me (finally getting it): Oh, I meant SQUIRRELS, not SNAILS.

Please don't ask me how on earth I was pronouncing "squirrels" that I made it sound like "snails". Having foreign friends is fun.

This is one friend that I only get to see once in a while. She also went through infertility and totally gets it. She chose to stop treatments and also chose not to adopt. She is now doing everything she can to be happy with her choices, which is not always easy. She does not patronize me and tell me everything will be fine. She does not think I am baby obsessed and I should just move on. She is, in fact, very supportive about my current indecision.

I wish I could see her more often, but she now lives far away. I wish it weren't so.

I'm PO

Remember my friend K? She's been working full time and paying for daycare. Her husband has not put a single penny towards that expense. In fact, his only contribution to the household is paying the mortgage, a hefty sum, but not even close to the sum of other expenses. He does this just to spite her, probably to give her one more reason to leave him.

She is about to make a major career decision that translates into a major pay cut. He, of course, is not supportive and will still not contribute towards daycare. This means that the kid might end up in granny's care, which is not ideal, given her advanced age and the fact that she cannot read or write.

He does not care. He would rather put his baby at risk than put a penny towards daycare. And he does not do this because he cannot afford it. Like I said, he just wants to upset his wife.  It is unbelievable, but for this madman, his major priority in life is to make his wife unhappy. That, and watching baseball. Everything else, including his child's well being (not to  mention a healthy relationship) is secondary.

So of course I was furious when she told me about it. I usually try to stay cool, knowing that there is always more than one side to a story, but this was too much for childless me. I was blabbering on about how he should be grateful to be a father, and that he should make everything he could for his baby, when I realized that I was probably the worst person to share this problem with. I cannot offer any solutions, and I am heavily biased against her idiot husband.

Infertility really messes up with my objectivity.

Sorrow

T's IVF failed. She's heartbroken and so are all of us, her friends from afar. I cannot imagine a better set of parents, and yet it is just not happening for them, in spite of all the money, effort, tears and indignities that the procedure entails. Some of you know more about it than I do.

I already sent her an email, but I feel I should call her tonight. What can I possibly tell her? I know nothing I say will cheer her up. The best I can hope for is not say anything stupid that will upset her.

K's story

At some point, about three years ago, I was exhausted and wanted to stop trying to get pregnant. At about that time, one of my friends  broke up with yet another boyfriend. She was heartbroken.

Like me, she had always wanted to find a great guy and have kids. But the great guy failed to show up for her. We were both in pain for different reasons, but still tried to give each other support. It was hard, since we live so far away from each other and only communicate through chats, emails and phone calls.

And then she met Mr. Not-Quite-Right. He also had a dream of finding a great woman and having kids. Other than that they had nothing in common, unless you count the fact that they both thought that getting engaged after dating for three months was a good idea.

So my friend is now Mrs. NQR. They still have nothing in common except a beautiful baby they both love maddeningly. But they don't seem to love each other anymore. K tells me that she still wants to stay married to this guy, basically for the sake of her child. Mr. NQR does not seem to enjoy her company and avoids her as much as he can. When he's at home, he either lavishes the baby with attention while ignoring his wife, or he sits in front of the TV, oblivious to the world.

To make things worse, she has migratory issues, in the sense that if her marriage fails she might be denied a green card and be deported, leaving her baby behind. Which pisses me off, since up until her marriage she had a perfectly good work visa and never had a problem entering or staying in this country. K is in pain. She needs support and advice.

I have no idea of what to suggest. And I am feeling very guilty, because now I often find myself thinking: "At least I have a green card, at least I have a loving husband and no marital problems..." Almost as if I were using her horrible situation to feel better.

But of course, I only feel worse.

Long distance support

In the middle of my period-less annoyance, I am keeping in touch with T, one of my best friends from college who is undergoing IVF. Since she already has too much on her plate, I kept my silly problem private.

She had retrieval on Thursday and she happily emailed  me to tell me that 5 eggs were retrieved and two were fertilized successfully. She was supposed to call in on Friday to see how her two embryos were doing, and then come back yesterday to have them transferred.

I did not hear from her on Friday, so I called her and found out that the two embryos were not doing as well as expected. They were subdividing, but not at the healthiest rate. Still, they did not cancel transference, and she was supposed to hope for the best and show up for transference yesterday morning anyway.

I have not heard from her. I sent her a support email yesterday evening, but still no word. I don't want to call her, and I am assuming that when she feels like talking she will contact me and the other friends who have been cheering her up throughout the whole process.

But if I don't call, will she feel neglected? I wish I knew what to do.

Novus amor est quod pereo

I took that verse from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. It means that new love is to die for. But what about old love, when years have passed and things have changed? B made me think about it.

B was in her fourties when she unexpectedly got pregant with her fourth child. It was during her first pregnancy check up that something wrong was detected. Soon after, she was told that she had cervical cancer and she needed to terminate the pregnancy. But by then she was in love with this baby, and she was willing to put off all cancer treatments until he was born. In other words, she was willing to risk her life for this new love.

B gave birth to a healthy baby boy through a C-section, after which she had a hysterectomy and started aggressive chemotherapy. Her cancer is in remission. More than 20 years have passed.

Last time I had lunch with her, she complained bitterly that her useless kids lived at her expense, sucking her blood like parasites, never helping out with housework and not contributing a single cent to the household. Her youngest boy, the cancer baby, had still to complete his GED and he had all the indications that he, too, was not going anywhere in life.

I asked her what she thought would be best, thinking that maybe she needed to ask the older siblings to pay rent or help out with some bills. Her answer? "I want them all OUT!!!! It's time for me to enjoy life!!! I should not have to worry about lazy bums partying all night and coming back home drunk!!!"

Basically, she would prefer that they all disappeared from her life. I suspect she does not really want that, but just the fact that she said it out loud tells me a lot about "old love".

I loved my baby the moment I saw a heartbeat, and I would have died for him. Would I still want him around me 20 years from now? I want to say yes, because my love for him was so strong that I really wanted to die after he was gone. I tell myself that he would have been a good student and a productive person, just like his parents. But what do I know?

I understand - wait, I don't

I am a good listener. People tell me all sorts of crazy shit. They even ask for my advice, as if I would know. Most of the time I am very disconnected from the circumstances they are dealing with. I never say stupid things like "I understand", "it's God's will", "you'll get over it" or any of that stuff because frankly I am not in their shoes, so I really cannot understand. I am as clueless as any mortal about whatever it is that God's will is, and I don't even know if people can get over some of the things I've heard.

When people tell you their problems they don't need your pity. What they need is to get it all out and talk openly about their problems without having to pretend that nothing ever happened.  At least that is how I feel. Bad things happen to everyone and we all have to deal with our baggage, and talking about it can be helpful. So I listen and make comments about how horrible and sad it all seems, how sorry I am that such things happened, how I wish I could help. And people keep telling me their shit.

Sadly, I clearly cannot talk about mine. I am too sensitive to stupid comments, and I get them all the time. Perhaps that's why I started this blog, so I, too, can get it all out. Even if nobody's listening.