No Thanks For Being A Friend

Posted by Anonymous

This friendship is over. I am not in the least bit sad about it. It was never real to me. I thought it could be. I did try. But you could never open up enough for it to be a real friendship. You're too busy trying to present this picture to the world that isn't real.

I'm too old for this shit. And you're even older than me. I won't be made to feel bad for just letting a friendship go. If I were to have problems in my other friendships, I would talk about it. I would deal with issues, no matter how painful. But with this one, I'm afraid I don't care enough.

I'm mad at myself for letting you off easy. For making it seem as though I'm just too busy. If I felt like you cared at all, I would have made more of an effort.

I've overlooked snide comments, snotty comments, mean comments, and I've thought to myself, "I don't need this shit".

Really, I don't.

Perhaps we'll say goodbye this week. We're both moving.

Perhaps we won't. Perhaps you'll just blame me some more, even though I've been the best friend you've had for four years. Did you ever ask yourself why the other women stopped talking to you? Because you will never open up. You'll never be vulnerable, or real. You'll never let anyone see you without makeup, or let anyone in if your house is a mess.

That speaks volumes to me.

I'm over it. I'm mad that I'm even letting it bother me. We haven't spoken in a week, but I'm being blamed for this. You could have picked up the fucking phone. Or emailed. Or done anything to show that you cared. But because your husband is deployed for longer than mine, your struggle is bigger and more complicated than I could ever understand, right?

And just so you know, your son's comments have made it obvious what you say behind my back. He's too young to understand what not to say. But now I know.

I feel like I'm in high school. Can't a friendship just end without any recriminations? It's not working, move on, end of story.

Where I Wish I Was

Posted by Anonymous.

I am so disappointed in myself. And so jealous of her. We are the same age. We both graduated from high school the same year, went to college and both have a bachelor's degree. She makes $50,000 a year and I make $14.00 an hour. I feel like a failure. That should be me. I'm just as smart, just as capable as her. The difference? I have 2 kids. The position she was given over me requires her to travel 75% of the time. I am not in a position to do that because of my children. I cannot be away from home for extended periods of time and overnight. I love my children so much...so why do I resent them and feel like they are holding me back from a promotion? When I see her in the office (she has an office with a door and I work FOR her from a cubicle), I feel insufficient. I doubt myself. She is going on to get her master's. I can barely afford $200 a week in daycare, I can't even consider going back to school. She immediately got a job in her field of study after college and has 7+ years experience. Me? I worked at a zoo, then for a graphics company, then I had a baby and another baby. Now that I actually have a job relevant to my degree I have zero experience. If I hadn't married young, if I hadn't started a family so soon, if I had chosen a career path and stuck to it - I could be where she is. My husband has a good job, but does not even have a college education and he makes $20 an hour. My self esteem is in the toilet. I know I can't compare the joy of having two beautiful, healthy children to having a career, but I will be fully honest and say I wish I was where she is instead of where I am. And I get even more depressed about feeling that way.

Privacy Is As Privacy Does: A Poll

Have you ever been freaked out when a casual acquaintance from ‘real life’ found your blog? Or when your Sitemeter showed a steady stream of Google pervs visiting your site? Do you wonder about whether to put up photos of your children or your friends on your blog, for fear of your privacy? Many of us have experienced these unsettling moments, and questioned or even changed our writing styles and our habits as a result.

What strategies do you use to reach the audience you want, while maintaining your own privacy? Most bloggers use some kind of anonymization or privacy strategy, a ‘screen name’ being the most simple and obvious.

Mommy-blogger and researcher Aimée Morrison (Department of English, University of Waterloo, Canada) is conducting a study of writing strategies to protect privacy. She has set up a voluntary, anonymous 15- to 20-minute survey at http://english.uwaterloo.ca/~ahm/ that asks questions about such strategies, for example, if you use password protection to limit your writing’s audience. Follow the link to learn more about the study, or to participate. You can also contact Prof. Morrison directly at ahm [at] uwaterloo [dot] ca for more information.

Aimée is going to BlogHer in San Francisco, and she’d love to interview you in person if you’re going—send her an email at the address above.

Please feel free to repost this message, unchanged, to your blog to encourage others to participate too.

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This study has been reviewed by, and received ethics clearance through, the Office of Research Ethics, University of Waterloo.

Birthday

Posted by Anonymous.

48 hours from now (6/25/08) I will be broken. Beaten down, heartbroken, aching, longing, destroyed. Just for that day.

It will be your birthday. Your first birthday. I never got to meet you, but I knew you. You grew inside of me. I felt you there before I even knew for sure I was pregnant. I say, "before I knew", but I knew. I knew you were there long before I even missed my period. If I'm honest, I think I knew you were there the second you were conceived. I can't explain why, or how, but I knew. I think your father knew too. We hardly talked about it, and I haven't spoken to him in months, so I certainly can't ask him now. He doesn't understand (no one seems to) why I feel the way I do. Why I miss you, why I mourn for you.

Aside from how things ended with him and I, you were conceived in love. In the greatest love I have ever known. The kind that awakens your soul, makes you feel invincible, makes everything seem brighter and more alive. That is why it hurts so bad. You were a piece of that love that I could keep with me.

But you left me. And the only way I could describe it to him is that I feel like a failure. I feel like I failed at being a woman. We are given this incredible gift to carry life inside of us and introduce it to the world. And I couldn't do it. He pointed out, "You've done it before". At the time (and still at times), that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I was able to do it before. That I have a beautiful daughter. What matters is that I couldn't do it that second time.

It took a long time after you left to get back on my feet. To not walk around with this huge hole inside of me. Feeling empty and betrayed (by who, or what, I don't know). It took a long time to stop rubbing my belly, pretending I could feel you. To be honest, I still do. To make matters worse, two of my neighbors got pregnant around the same time as I did. I couldn't look at them or speak to them without choking up. I'd stare at their bellies in amazement. Thinking, "That's what I'd look like now." Now that the babies are here, it hurts to look at them. Because all I see is you. What you would have been.

I still look at photos of your sister when she was a baby. And imagine you at that age. If you would have been anything like her, you'd already be walking like a champ. Getting into anything and everything. Lighting up my life. Your sister constantly tells me she wants a baby sister. She has no idea how deeply those words wound me.

I can't talk to anyone about it. I hear the same old things: It wasn't meant to be; These things happen for a reason; You'll have another baby again someday; Mother Nature knows best. Fuck Mother Nature. Also, I don't want ANOTHER baby. I want YOU. I want you back. I know that's not possible. I know it. Just like it's not possible to have your father back. But I want it all the same. I want to know WHY. I'm tired of doctors telling me "It's not your fault. Nothing you did caused this." I don't believe it. It was MY body. My body that rejected you. Not my heart, but my body. That is something I did.

I'll be thinking about you on Wednesday. Not that I don't any other day. You're always with me. I think about you all the time. I miss you. I don't know how to move on from this. Maybe I never will.

I never got to hold you in my arms, but I will always hold you in my heart. Always. I love you my precious baby. And I'm so, so sorry.