A Slight Dilemma

This is a post that I've been toying with, for a while now. I was unsure about putting it here, because it means dragging up a lot of past shit regarding this person. Suffice it to say, it's gonna be a long one.

Here's the question of the day-how do you deal with Fertiles that don't "get it"-especially when they're a close friend or family member?

My best friend, M, have always told people that we've known each other "since fetus"-our parents knew each other socially even before we were born. We went to part of grammar school together, lived down the street with each other, were in Brownies and Girl Scouts together, talked every day....you get the picture. We were like sisters-she was an only child, I had an annoying little brother (who we both unmercifully teased).

So, when I moved away, at age 14, to rural NJ, it was like seperating conjoined twins. She stayed in the urban area where we grew up, went to Catholic high school, listened to club music and became a guidette (if you don't know what that is, watch any episode of "The Sopranos", and you'll get a perfect visual example)-and I can say that because we're both Italian. My teenage years were the total opposite-I went to public high school in a rural area, where most people wore LL Bean, JCrew and Outback Red clothing-really, it was kind of like being in a John Hughes movie-there were the burnouts, punks, preppies, and tramps-all mixing together. We listened to REM and The Cure, hung out at house parties at the weekend, or partied in open fields with bonfires (and that's when we weren't out cow-tipping....yeah, I tried it). In other words, we were total opposites once we moved our seperate ways, yet we still were best friends.

So, how did we do it? Beats the hell out of me, really. We hung out more in college, since it was closer to her (she didn't go to school right away, and lived at home), were in each other's weddings, and I'm the godmother to her daughter. We've been through it all together-car accidents (when we were 17-she was driving), summers at the Shore, my infertility treatments (where she, being a nurse, did my PIO shots), her marriage and subsequent divorce. But, it seems that, within the past year, there's been a slight growing apart-perhaps I shouldn't call it that. It's more like a situation of not truly understanding.

M got pregnant in October of 2000-in fact, she thinks that she conceived the night of my wedding after being off birth control for a month (well, at least SOMEBODY did, right?). Her daughter was born in July of 2001. We decided to start trying in June of 2002.......and, well, you know the result of that. Throughout this journey of mine, M has tried to be supportive of what I'm going through, but I really think that her status as an already-mother slightly skewed her perception. She couldn't understand why I'd be reluctant to go to her daughter's birthday parties (filled with our friends and their children) or why I wasn't jumping for joy that so-and-so was pregnant for the first, second, or third time.

Now, she was having problems of her own at the time, problems that even her family or I (being her best friend) had no idea of-a husband who was verbally abusive, emotionally uninvolved with both her and her child, irresponsible and lazy. In fact, it wasn't until two years ago that she confessed that they were having big problems and was at her wits end. They tried therapy, but he didn't want to go. They did seperate (in fact, he packed up and left-in front of their daughter-the night they returned from a trip to Disney World....nice guy, huh?) and eventually divorced. Now, that is something that I've never, and hope to never, go through. She went through hell-disentangling their marriage-the new house they bought three months before, child support, who'd get the dog, etc. Unfortunately, she's still has to have contact with him, because of their child, and he can be, well, a self-centered prick-he cares more about working and seeing his girlfriend than when his daughter will be with him. Which doesn't surprise me, really-if it's not about him, it doesn't matter, at least in his eyes.

But, I digress-the point is that M did go through a rough time, and this all ran concurrent with IVF attempt #1, failed FET #1 and part of IVF#2. She would call me and have hour long rants about what a dickhead her ex was, go through every detail of who said what, what the lawyers said, what he's doing/not doing with their daughter. And then, perhaps to seem like she's interested in what's going on with me, she'd ask me what's going on in the infertility front, and I'd tell her. Of course, she wasn't really listening, because the next conversation we'd have, she'd ask the same questions, and some of them are those typical IF questions that we've all heard before.

I now realize that she couldn't emotionally deal with anything at the time, given that she was going through such a messy divorce, and was being self-centered because of that. However, it seems to me as if that self-centerdness is still going on. It's as if I don't rate on the scale because I don't have kids, or that I don't understand because I haven't been through what she's been through. She's also a bit of a control freak, and has had some medical issues due to stress.

Lately, she's been through some gyno issues-she's tested positive for HPV, has had to have some biopsies and a LEEP done. Her twato (who I also go to) told her that if she wanted to have more children, she should try within the next year or so. So now she's obsessed with whether or not she should have more kids, or that she's going through early menopause, because the twato took her off the Pill almost three months ago and her cycles are wacky-she's on day 32 without a period yet. And, she when she calls me she talks constantly about these things, which is starting to really piss me off. In fact, yesterday's conversation about this made me say to her, "look, I think that you're talking to the wrong person about this, because you've got one child already", which shut her up for about one minute, then went on about how she looked up things on Dr. Google and she thinks that she's going through early menopause, because she has hot flashes. And this is from a person who is a registered nurse, people.

Now, I'm really trying to be supportive and to listen to what she's saying, but I think that she's being ridiculous about this. Perhaps she thinks that we now have "common ground" because she now has a gyno issue, but really, it is in no way similar to what I'm going through. She also seems to blow me off an awful lot-like this morning. We were originally planning on doing a trip to the Shore, but it's shitty rain outside. She decides that she has some errands to run, so when I talked to her at 10 this morning, I suggested lunch plans. She hesitated, then said that she thought that sounded good, but that she'd call me while she was on her errands to let me know for sure (a dead giveaway that plans would fall through)-and, subsequently, the phone call came about a half hour ago that she "didn't think that she could meet today, but maybe after her manicure/pedicure tomorrow......", like I'm just another slot in her schedule, squeezed inbetween her nail and chiropractor appointments. When she said that, I replied "Yeah, I figured that you wouldn't be able to, you didn't seem like you could when I asked you"; to which I got the "tomorrow, Plan B" line, and where I then lied and said that I had plans tomorrow. Because I just don't want to deal.

So, my problem is multi-layered-I think that she's being an ass (and I'm not the only one-Sean has noticed it too, and he NEVER says anything negative about people) and really self-absorbed, but do I risk a potential blow-out argument over it? Because, given how I feel, it might happen if I tried to broach the subject. Do I ignore it, or is that like letting her get away with it? Am I being oversensitive, given that she has a child and I'm in what seems to be perpetual baby-limbo? Am I expecting too much from her? Is it worth it, or is it really my problem, not hers?

What would you do?