Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Unfortunately, It Wasn't a Rhetorical Question

For those of you wondering about my last post (where I asked "Is it EVER appropriate to tell someone who has lost a child to GET OVER IT"?), YES, this was said to me.  If you want to get technical, it wasn't said to my face but to others who let me know about it.  I just don't even know what to say anymore.  Honestly.  I feel myself pulling back, pulling away, avoding people, because I can not BELIEVE how judged I am.  Do people think I wanted this life?  Do people think I enjoy missing my son every day for the rest of my life?  God knows I never wanted this, that I prayed for my children every single day several times a day of my pregnancy.  This life is my worst nightmare, but it's the only one I have, so I have to figure it out, don't I?  I can't believe losing him wasn't enough, that I have to lose friends too, friends who won't take the time to talk to ME but judge me with no understanding of what I've been through.  Neither of these people have children of their own.  So they don't know what it's like to parent much less lose a child.  I look at how I live my life compared with how I expected things to turn out after losing my son, and I have to say I think I'm doing one hell of a job keeping my sh*t together.  I work a full time job, keep a very active social calendar, spend time with my parents and sister weekly, try new recipes about twice a week, blog every once in a while, and check in every now and then on a loss forum I help run on FB as co-administrator.  All while raising my daughter and missing my son simultaneously.  On FB I also make and post remembrance images for my close friends who have lost a child or children.  Yes, I go to counseling, but that is something I have needed to do long before my loss.  Of the two who have completely been judgy toward me, ONE is someone I trusted and shared a lot of my grief process with.  Which hurts, because I would never have opened my mouth had I known the judgment that was forming in her mind.  The other friend, I literally have NEVER ONCE talked to about my grief.  When he's around, I never mention my son, and he's never asked me ONCE how I am doing, so it never came up.  So how the hell does he get off telling multiple people I need to GET OVER IT already (apparently he started saying this when I was only six months out).  You'd think that I lit a candle anytime someone came to the house and demanded they say a prayer for my son or something.  That I live on the couch, dressed in all black, blasting Portishead and carving my son's name into my wrist with a butcher knife.  I mean seriously, what am I doing that screams "not dealing well"?!  If people are going to make this sort of judgment simply by my posting a few remembrance images on FB or because I have a shelf in my home displaying some gifts people have given us in honor of our son, then THEY are the ones who need to get their heads examined.  I did not just have a bad day.  I lost my child.  I will never get over him.  He will always be a part of our family.  Anyone who wants to judge me for simply loving and missing my child has absolutely no place in my life.  Anyone who thinks I am morbid for trying to help others through the difficult days by making and sharing a picture of a flower with a name and date on it to honor their baby is just cold and selfish.  It takes a few minutes of my time, and many of the women I've done this for have said it made their day, that they wanted to print it for their memory books, or even frame them in their homes.  Do people not understand that you have to be in a certain place yourself in your own healing to even be in a spot to try and help others?  I'm sorry to say that the losses of these friendships feel like betrayals far beyond any others I've ever experienced (as far as friendships go).  They just hurt so deep to my core.  I have been trying to stay strong and say "Good riddance", because that is the truth of it from a rational standpoint, but I have to be honest and just say that my heart hurts.  And I'm really starting to slip and struggle here, whereas before I WAS doing okay.  I look at other failed friendships and the drama leading up to their demise is so trivial and pales in comparison with this, so much that I'd be willing to mend any prior failed friendships, truly.  But this?  This I can't see any reconciliation for.  I see no context in which it could even be remotely appropriate for people to say such hurtful, insensitive, and disrespectful comments about me.  The anger, the anger comes from a place deeper than my own scars, too.  It feels like I'm taking on anger for the entire loss community, because I KNOW I'm not the only one who has been judged and lost friends after losing a child.  I'd always heard this happens, that it's inevitable, that you lose friends.  But until it happened to me, that shared anger for the community hadn't really set in.

9 comments:

  1. Somehow I knew it wasn't rhetorical.

    Oh, to be ignorant.

    You don't need them. Obviously you don't, as no friend should make you feel less human or more crappy than you already feel in your grief. How dare they judge you.

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  2. I'm sorry these people hurt you Lindsay. No one can judge until they've walked in our shoes, but it still hurts when they do.

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  3. With you all the way on this. I lost some very close and what I thought were special friendships, including my very best friend from the age of five. People can be such jerks. Yeah, they try hard, or so they think, but it stings. This is our life, and all we're doing is our very best. Even if some days it doesn't look like it. Getting out of bed is often just a huge achievement.
    xo

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  4. NO ONE, EVER TRULY gets it but those who have walked the path; yet it still rips off the wound 10x, time and time again. And time and time again.

    Have NO remorse for this; it's DONE. They don't earn your friendship, love, or any semblance of respect. walk away like they walked away from you; silence is deafening.

    Love to you, Mother.

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  5. I am so sorry these people have such little empathy. It is so sad when friends turn out not to be who you thought they were. And it is so difficult too when you don't get a chance to discuss it with them, to explain how hurt you are by their unwillingness to try and understand your heartache. But, I guess they are lucky that they don't get it like we do. My old boss used to always say "life will teach them". One day they will have a better understanding. Unfortunately for your friendships, it seems by then it will be too late.

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  6. Oh it is horrible to be hurt so deeply by those we trust. You are strong and brave and empathetic and you deserve true friends. I'm so sorry this happened.

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  7. speechless and shocked people can be so out right evil.

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  8. *sigh*. Yes, I suspected it wasn't a rhetorical question but I'm sorry that it wasn't.

    As I said, they deny their own humanity when they fail to show you compassion. It doesn't make it hurt any less though. I am sorry.

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