Fair-Weather Friendships

Nowadays I just have random thoughts running rampant in my brain, and some irk me more than others. I'm not sure if they're legitimate or if they're just leftover hormones, but here's one of them:

What the fuck happened to some of my friends through all of this shit that I'm going through?? Where did they go when I needed them?

Now, let me try to explain my network of friends. I can categorize them into groups:

1. Friends from childhood/school/college
2. Friends from Church
3. Friends that I've met through work
4. Friends that I've met online through sites like Fertility Friend.
5. Friends made through acting experiences at a particular theater.

I have no problems with friendships from categories 1-4-in fact, they have been amazingly supportive, sensitive and nothing but kind. Category #5, on the other hand, leaves much to be desired.

A little background for you: Most of the friends in this grouping I've known for almost ten years. I've celebrated weddings (I have been in them, and they were a part of my wedding), dinners, vacations, and parties with these people. They all knew what I was going through with infertility from the beginning. They've seen me get upset and cry over all of this bullshit. Now, ask me how many of them have called me, even once, to see how I am, or what was up, since January.

One. Just one, and she called me right after my embryo retrieval, as I was beginning to hyperstimulate. I think that I actually called her first, so I'm not sure if I should even count her.

Not anyone else. Not a card, not an email, not a phonecall. These were people that, up to this point, I considered pretty good friends. I am now wondering if they meant more to me than I obviously did to them. And this realization really sucks.

I know that infertility is a mysterious, scary thing to those who aren't going through it, and it's not easy to understand. And it's not like I was constantly talking about my reproductive problems to them-in fact, a lot of the time they were the ones to bring it up in conversation.

This whole obsessive thought came about because I got a general email from one of these friends saying that he was thinking of having a Memorial Day bash at his house and he wanted to see who was interested. I really had the almost uncontrollable urge to send a mass reply saying that I wouldn't go, because I wasn't interested in being a "fair-weather" friend anymore, but I chickened out and so haven't replied yet.

It just pisses me off. I feel a little betrayed by these people. I'm not saying that I want people to kiss my ass, but they knew that I was going through IVF and they didn't even acknowledge it. It just hurts that I thought that these people were better friends than they turned out to be, in the end. And I feel stupid, as if I should have known, deep down, that they would be this way-it's like my eyes have finally been opened.

I feel as I've been shunned, alienated, from a group of people that were once good friends, but now are in this ambiguous category that I have yet to name- "People who once were close friends that I'm not sure are anymore"? "People who are self-centered"? What do I call them now?

Just chalk this up as another casualty in the psychological and physical warfare that is infertility.