We met in August of 2006 when she moved to Ft. Drum from Texas. She had married a buddy of Mike's while he was home on R&R and we hit it off right away. Sure there were some things about her that drove me nuts, but that's friendship right? She had a second baby in November 2007, a baby that she conceived after three months of TTC. I remember her telling me that she was actually concerned that something was wrong after the second month of not getting pregnant. Over the next few years we spent a lot of time together, in spite of mine and Mike's disapproval of their parenting style.For example, it was regular occurrence for them to leave their baby unattended in her high chair eating finger foods while they went out on the porch to smoke. If I was there, I'd always stay inside to keep an eye on her. I used to love to rock C to sleep and they would tell me that I was spoiling her and to put her down. They rushed C through her infancy and then complained about how their baby was such a big girl already when she was only 10 months old. She smoked in the car with her kids in the back and it drove me absolutely crazy. Mike and her husband were really good work friends though and we always had a good time playing cards or board games with them so the friendship continued. Mike and I were constantly annoyed by them and now that I look back, I don't know how we managed to put up with them so long!
We were mutual friends with another couple up until our friend's husband decided to spread rumors that Mike was sleeping around on me in Iraq. Any military wife can attest that rumors like that are poisoinus, especially during a deployment. Well, Mike and I stopped talking to them immediately but the other two couples remained friends. I wasn't going to say, "Well if you're friends with her you can't be friends with me" because that's so high school. I did, however, request that she not talk to me about them anymore. I no longer cared about them and I wanted nothing to do with them after the rumors. She repeatedly denied my request, insisting that they were part of her life and she couldn't avoid talking about them. Mike was having a really difficult deployment after losing four friends in a helicopter crash. It was particularly hard because he was the last crew chief with his hands on the aircraft before they went down so he felt partly responsible, even though the cause of the crash was determined to be enemy fire. He had to take part in the investigation--Picking pieces of your friends from wreckage messes with your mind for sure. Mike shut down on me for a few months, I was terrified that our marriage was over. Then those rumors surfaced and shattered my world. I said to my friend, "I'm so scared that Mikes' going to come home and tell me that it's over." Her response, "Well, he might." Thank you so much for your support. By the way, if it's not obvious to you, Mike and I are doing loads better. :P
Then there was her oldest daughter from her first marriage. Her oldest daughter is ADHD and my friend would always blame her piss poor behavior on the ADHD. Everything was blamed on the ADHD and even if her daughter was punished, she didn't understand the consequences (because of the ADHD, of course!) and would go right back to doing the same behavior. It made it very difficult to hang out with them; it's not very much fun when someone is constantly screaming at a child. In the summer of 2008, during the second half of our second Iraq deployment, her daughter set their apartment on fire. I would have to say that this was the turning point and the down fall of our friendship because of the events that played out after the fire.
She called me in the middle of the night, asking for the number to send a Red Cross Message to her husband in Iraq because their apartment building almost burned down. Her daughter had found a lighter, taken it into her closet and started a fire. They lost almost everything and they didn't have renter's insurance. She wasn't upset with her daughter though, of course the fire was due to the lack of impulse control caused by the ADHD. I couldn't believe it. Her daughter hid in her closet with the lighter, which tells me that she knew what she was doing was wrong but that she did it anyway. The next day I went shopping and bought the girls a bunch of clothes and sent them to Texas. They had, after all, lost almost everything, right?
Her husband was sent home on emergency leave within 48 hours of the incident. During the two weeks that he was home on e-leave they moved into the new house they had just bought, had a house warming party, multiple barbecues and had a wonderful time. Two weeks prior to the fire, I had sold my house and hired movers to help move me into an apartment. My mom and sister came to help too since I was basically all alone with Mike deployed and all my friends out of the area during the deployment. I was a little jealous but I pushed my feelings aside because a house fire is a big deal!
What did they put in their new house? Didn't they lose everything in the fire? Nope. The fire was contained in the bedroom closet before the apartment's sprinkler system kicked on. The only items that were damaged were the blankets, a few clothes (most were in their dressers) and toys in the closet. Most of the damage came from the fire extinguishers that the firefighters used and not the fire itself. Imagine my shock! Now, imagine the way I felt when I found out that her husband got to go home on emergency leave because of that. Was it scary? I'm sure it was! Did it warrant emergency leave? I'm not entirely sure. The more we discussed the fire, the more I realized exactly how much she exaggerated the situation. I was irate.
A few weeks after the fire, Mike had to have an emergency appendectomy. He's a stubborn man who hates the doctor so he did not go to sick call until he was ordered to do so. At that point, his appendix had almost ruptured. I thought of him waking up all alone after surgery and felt so terrible. I prayed for the Army to send him home early. There was only five weeks left in the deployment and Mike wouldn't be able to do anything that entire time. My poor husband had to recover in his CHU with only a Johnny on the Spot for the bathroom. His unit did not send him home early. Can you imagine how upset and irate I was considering the circumstances under which my friend's husband was sent home just a few weeks prior? I know this was not her fault but this was the beginning of my resentment and the downward spiral of our friendship.
Our husbands came home in October 2009. Mike got to come home on Main Body 1 instead of Main Body 2, an entire week early. She was just visiting for the homecoming since she and the kids planned to stay in TX while he finished out his contract with the Army. They decided this would be a great time to try for baby #3, despite the fact that they were living separately and he planned to get out of the Army in a few months and had no job prospects in sight. At one point my friend told me, "We're not ashamed to take welfare if we have to." Nice, right?
The holiday season approached and she calculated that she was going to be ovulating over Thanksgiving. She actually packed up her two kids and drove from Texas to NY, not just to spend Thanksgiving with her husband but also because she was going to be fertile. Mike and I were going to be in Indiana for Thanksgiving so we let them borrow our place while we were out of town. Can you guess what happened next? I'll take obvious questions for 200, Alex...... She got pregnant with baby #3. At this point, Mike and I had just resumed TTC (we had tried 8 months before deployment) so I wasn't at the bitter stage that I am at now.
Over the next several months Mike and I moved from Ft. Drum to Ft. Lewis and got settled in our new life. We were so glad to leave the drama at Fort Drum behind us! My friend's husband got out of the Army, moved down to Texas and they immediately went on welfare. I remember my friend calling me so excited because her family of four qualified for over $600 in food stamps a month. SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS. I can't IMAGINE spending that much on groceries and was quite annoyed that they were eating like kings all the while continuing to buy their bourbon and cigarettes and complaining how broke they were. He did finally get a job and works as a 911 dispatcher for almost 25k less than what he was making in the Army.
Over the past year, our conversations have been strained. I began to realize that they brought all their problems on themselves. He couldn't get promoted---he was lazy and flagged for his weight. They were broke--he got out of the Army after 10 years despite not having a job to go to. So many things! Even though she knew our infertility struggles, she continued to complain to me about never getting any alone time with her husband. Recently, she sent her kids away for three weeks. She couldn't wait to get rid of them for awhile yet the day after they left, she was posting on Facebook about how the house was too quiet and how she missed her kids sooo much. Give me a break. It started to get to the point where I'd groan whenever her name would come on on the Caller ID. I didn't want to hear about her best friend worrying that she waited too late to start a family (she's 28) and that she was going to have infertility too, after hearing about my struggles. I was tired of her. I had outgrown our friendship.
She called me on Thursday and I wrote her a message that simply said, "I need some space right now. I'm in a dark place and can't be the friend that I need to be." Initially she wrote me back and said that she'd respect my feelings and give me the space that I needed, but several hours later I received a long e-mail from her explaining that she could no longer be friends with me. She felt I had too many rules. There it is. The line in the sand. That elusive line between fertiles and infertiles. Infertiles ask for some empathy, understanding and common courtesy and fertiles accuse us of being self absorbed. Obviously it's not always like this. I have a lot of wonderful, fertile women in my life and thankfully most of them make a valiant attempt to be sensitive to my feelings.
She used my blog against me. Remember my bit about insanity? She said that is what our friendship had become. I also don't think she was too appreciative of my remarks regarding parents that complained about their kids or resenting women who get pregnant so easily. She said that I was too demanding with my requests for empathy and understanding, especially because I was not willing to reciprocate. Do I have a difficult time dealing with posts about children, baby showers, pregnancies, etc.? Hell yes. However, I have never said anything hurtful or insensitive to her or anyone else for that matter. I try to avoid situations that upset me or make me uncomfortable. I use my blog to vent my frustrations and pain. She was tired of worrying that she was going to offend me but that she shouldn't feel guilty either. She said our friendship was a one-way road that she was not willing to travel down anymore and that she hoped I'd realize exactly how much I'm blessed. Nice, right?
Much to my surprise, I wasn't incredibly hurt by her words. They were, for the most part, true and she basically the same way that I did--that our friendship had been over for a long time. I have been a lousy friend lately but the fact that she didn't realize WHY I wasn't able to be there for her just shows that she will never, ever know what it's like to be in my position. She can't possibly begin to understand my pain, which is why I never called her when I was upset or hurting. She just doesn't get it. How can she? Three beautiful children that she easily conceived and that she took for granted every single day. On one hand, I am incredible relieved to have closed the book on that chapter in my life. This friendship was EXHAUSTING and weighing me down. I couldn't even remember why we were friends anymore. It's good that it's over but I'm kind of annoyed that she got the last word. Is that childish? Haha. She deleted me from Facebook too. Isn't it funny that 'un-friending' is considered a modern day insult? This inspired me though and I deleted several other people from my Facebook as well. It was very liberating.
I checked my blog tracker shortly after receiving her e-mail and saw that she had been stalking my blog for several hours, no doubt looking for a post like the one that I'm writing. I've made my blog private for now. I hope that I'll be able to re-open it in a few months and make it public again. I know a lot of my readers didn't get to see my last post before I changed the privacy settings. I know this post was incredibly long and I don't really expect any feedback or comments. I needed to write this for me, to tell myself that it's okay to move on and that I'm not the bad guy in this situation. Of course I have my faults too but I do not feel like I am a horrible person for reacting the way I have been these past several months. People change in time and most of the time people grow up. Moving on is a good thing and I hope that cutting this negative friendship out of my life will only bring good things. Thank goodness for closure.
"The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning."
--- IVY BAKER PRIEST
