In this battle of infertility, I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by great support. We always use that phrase: we wouldn’t wish this hell on anyone but thankfully the company is amazing. And it really is. The support I’ve found is some of the most amazing I’ve ever felt. I’ve also been lucky enough to have a friend IRL who is also going through it. It blows that both of us desperately want children and can’t but we are lucky to have each other. We can be the hugs in real life that so many of us can’t extend to each other even though sometimes that is all we wish we could do.

I’ve talked about her before. I’ve never given her name because she chooses to keep her battle private and I respect her wishes in doing so. She knows that I do talk about her on occasion here at my blog, but strictly in the form of my “IF friend IRL”. We hold each other while we cry, we have that instant verbal banter and complaining back and forth that we both so desperately need sometimes. The comforting glance shared during a baby shower we are both attending. She gets the randomness of the triggers and can read the warning signs in my demeanor before I can see them myself just as I can easily do for her. One quick glance caught by no one else and suddenly a conversation is quickly diverted from that awkward area we know is inevitable. We can easily move in and out of topics of conversations from the news of a friends pregnancy to a new recipe. Together, we don’t need to always be about infertility but we can always go to that topic if we need to and there is no awkwardness if we do. A silent conversation, a choreographed dance perfected over years of mutual shared heartache. I’m so very lucky to have many amazing and understanding friends both in real life and online, both affected by infertility and even the fertile myrtles too. But this specific friendship is on a different level. Friends since elementary school (and all the stupid fights and not talking for extended periods of time added in there to boot) with a mutual pain understood by so few people.

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to have an evening out with her. Errands, just the two of us. Then we sat in her vehicle in my driveway for 45 minutes just talking. My husband even called me from inside the house asking if we would like to come in and finish talking because he doesn’t bite but we were in the zone and we would lose that zone as soon as we got out of the vehicle. We talked about everything, the husbands, our parents, drama in the families, work, and our infertility. We talked about our frustrations. What we wished other people understood, her waiting for her sporadic period to start so she could continue with testing and me starting my first round of cycle testing. We complained about the costs of treatment and where we are magically going to find money for our own treatments and questioning just how far each of us are willing to go. She asks about you guys, all of you. She asks what you would do and how each of you decide to go through it and what I take away from blogging so openly about it. She’s never really been a blogger and I don’t think she could share her story even in an anonymous setting even if she’s ok with me mentioning her on here occasionally.

But our talk yesterday did trigger something. A thought I’ve been slowly processing since. Something that was probably stored away from the PAIL discussions and healing rooms people hosted. I’m still working my way through it so my thoughts are jumbled at best. Friend and I talked about what happens if one of us makes it to our goal before the other? What changes? How do we enjoy what we have without feeling badly for our friend still there in the trenches? And she looked at me with so much determination and told me that we simply enjoy what we have, we can’t forget and we can’t feel bad. But no matter what, we will always be that support for each other. We won’t feel bad when the other is sad because that is part of the process and you will always know that the one not there yet is happy despite the pain at that moment. We don’t give up on the other and we don’t stop supporting each other. We give the other the space to process but both parties have to keep the support system whole or else it all falls apart and everyone feels left out. We acknowledge it and adjust because we are worth the work and it would hurt more to walk away cold than to work and adjust to new settings.

And honestly, it made me think of this community. I think of how many times I had to walk away from blogs because seeing it is hard, but I also think of how many of my blogging friends just dropped off the face of the blogging world after they got their happy ending. We supported these people through their treatments, through their pregnancy but for many of them, once they get that pregnancy or child they walk away from the community, never returning the support to the people still there fighting in the trenches. And I think that’s where it bugs me. A good form of support gives and takes equally. I have blogger friends who have had successful treatments and some of them still comment and read regularly yet others have gotten pregnant, changed their blog, never looked back and stopped offering support or comforting words to those who had words of support through their own struggles. I know that a bulk of my regular current blog list is pregnant now, and I know that half (if not more) of them will or have moved on to never return and to never return the support when it comes to my time. And that fact hurts more than pregnancy posts on CD1 of a failed cycle.

Is this why our divide is so strong? The clear divide of those who made it to the promise lands? Many claim they don’t know how to fit in now that they are pregnant or have children, while others still post comfortably despite their children and pregnancies and still comment with ease despite the change. Is that why people disappear? Is it because people don’t want to have reminders of their past? A good support system is an equal give and take and I sometimes get the vibe that people feel that the lack of equal support or a change in that equal support is what causes this rift.

I’m only speaking from my own personal experience, but when I choose to follow a blog, its not because they are an infertility blog. I choose to follow a blog because its a well rounded blog. I gravitate towards bloggers that write about everything in their life, not just one topic. These people become my friends and I create a rapport with them because I’m getting a view into their life and seeing their thought process. (An excellent example would be Mel @ Stirrup Queens) When one of those bloggers announce a pregnancy, I congratulate them and tell them that I’m truly happy and I’ll comment where I can. I want them to know that I’m always reading even if its a bad day or I can’t comment. I regularly comment on blogs that I’m comfortable enough to comment on. And if I’m comfortable enough to comment on your blog regularly, I’m comfortable enough to have you sit at my kitchen table and share a pot of tea with me. That’s what a comment means to me when I write on your post. If I’m willing to share something of my life in a comment and I do it often, its the equivalent of inviting you into my home for a cup of tea (or coffee), offering you a cinnamon roll I just took out of the oven and telling you to help yourself. So the clear loss of a blogger or a definitive change in their blogging style may drop my interest or comments. For instance, a blogger who regularly posts about a variety of topics like funny work stories, pets, something your spouse did, your infertility and how you destroyed supper last night turns into the blogger that suddenly only posts her weekly pregnancy updates and that’s it, will suddenly find me not commenting as much anymore because I comment on things when I feel I can contribute to the conversation or story. I’ll read it at first and then gradually start skimming it and before you know it, I just start passing over your post in my reader claiming that I’ll get to it later because so and so has a great discussion about this random article they found and I can contribute to that more than the other post. It broke my heart when I realized that I did that to 2 blogs. They were regular commenters, always positive comments and taking part in discussions on both blogs. Keeping up with me just as much as i was keeping up on them, kind words passed back and forth. They were both lucky, they both got pregnant. Their blogs went from random stories and anecdotes from their lives to pregnancy posts with funny pregnancy stories and other stories mixed in which I commented on if they were funny or I had something to contribute. Then all it was anymore was their weekly pregnancy posts talking about their symptoms and baby bumps. I’m not saying anything negative about those types of posts but when they are the only thing you post, its hard to make any sort of comment on it. I can’t commiserate with them, cause I’ve never been there, and if I comment with something along the lines of “yay that’s great” every single time, it sounds forced and fake and I’d rather not comment than have something come off as lip service. Then neither one of them has commented or even shown any interest in anything in my world since the early weeks of their pregnancy. I started skimming their posts, then I started saying I’d come back to it later because so and so had a post up about an article I was meaning to read. Then I realized that I completely missed over the post announcing the birth of each respective child. And realizing that? It made my stomach sick. And not because they have a child and I don’t. But rather because we stopped caring about each other. It felt like the end of a friendship.

I’m not saying its their fault or that its their job to entertain me, but its also not my job to contribute if its something I can’t relate to. And while I have absolutely no intention to find someone to lay blame on, we need to understand where it’s starting because we can’t fix it if we don’t know what caused it. Before we decide if we no longer fit in a community that aims to be inclusive of all people in all stages of the ALI world, we need to assess why we feel these changes and then see what/if anything caused this change other than a BFP. You know what? I know I’ve been guilty of just dropping off the earth too. We all know life happens. We know that some people really are just really sensitive to that sort of big news. But as IFer’s, we know that some things with a pregnancy can be triggers for others and you more than anyone get that and know that as long as the pregnancy isn’t your entire life, they will be there when they can, however they can. I just spent the last two months moving my parents to their new home, packing up my apartment and moving into out first home just weeks before Christmas and that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what I’ve been dealing with lately. So clearly, my communication within the community has dropped because I just haven’t had the time to read, comment and participate and it took me 3 weeks at one point to approve comments because I just kept forgetting to approve them even though I read them. I didn’t even participate in ICLW in December (my first in probably more than a year) and my blog felt naked and wrong all through ICLW. But with that, views on my blog were down, comments were even more scarce. I walked into that knowing that I can’t receive without giving. It’s not my job to entertain you but its also not your job to stick around and stroke my ego when I’m giving you nothing. So therefore, I can’t complain about lack of support during that time because you can’t read my mind and this is your only view into my life. Just like I can’t expect my real life friends and family to always read and comment on my rants about infertility. If I talked to them every minute of everyday about my infertility, they would lose interest in me just as fast as I would lose interest in them if all they ever did was talk about their children 24/7. We then lose the common ground we had because the topics that we talk about have changed. It’s not entirely my fault or their fault but rather equal parts acceptance of the issue by both parties and that if we are willing to look at the root of the change we might be able to fix that gap. Because if we don’t, the friendship will crumble and fall apart.

The discussion with my friend last night triggered these thoughts and they are just starting to form in my mind. But even though my thoughts are still a work in progress, I open the debate on this with anyone because I want my thoughts questioned and explored. I want to see the things I’m overlooking. I want to look at this from a different light. I want to understand it so that i will still feel comfort and welcomed in this community if I ever get the chance to make it to the other side (either through that BFP and healthy baby in my arms or finding comfort in the choice to live a full life without children) I want to understand and most of all, I want to keep my friends in the blogging world. I don’t want them to all drop off the face of the earth. Especially because they may feel that they no longer fit or they feel that they are hurting others. I don’t want to be jaded by the fact that I give support but its not returned by those that I gave it to because they moved on and away from the rest of us. I want that equal partnership of support, giving and taking as needed. I want the fight to be equal. I want to fight for all of you just like me and my friend will fight those feelings to keep the support equal, to be happy for each other no matter what. I just want people to fight for it as much as I’m willing to fight for it. It may seem like a tall list to ask for, but honestly, is it really that tall of a list?