I'm so happy for you

Monday as I was trying to get out of the office a friend with whom I have both personal and working relationship called. She clarified that she was calling for personal reasons and then said she had some news and that she wanted to share it with me but that she knew that it might be news that would be difficult for me to hear. At which point without her saying it I knew she was pregnant.

I wished her b'sha'a tova- the thing Israelis and other Hebrew speakers say to one another to congratulate and avoid tempting the evil eye. It means in a good hour - i.e. everything in its time. This is a friend who is three years older than me and gave birth to her first child at 40. Honestly I am happy for her. I know how much she wanted this and that unlike the first pregnancy when she conceived after the first IUI, this time she had more trouble.

Even though I expressed my happiness for her, she continued saying that she knows how hard its been for me and that she wanted to be careful of my feelings and that she still wants to be able to support me. I appreciated her support but I ironically, I found her worrying about me upsetting. I wanted her to be able to just be happy in her moment. I trust her and know that she will be supportive of me but I was also happy to let that moment be about her. It made me think that while sharing about my fertility issues has overall been liberating, it has clearly had an influence on how people see me or how they think I will react to their good news.

The fact is, I did cry a little after I got off the phone. I cried out of frustration and probably jealousy. I cried because I want to be truly happy and not have the joy of my friends be seen in contrast to my own challenges. It is still hard to be around. The photo of another friend's pregnant belly on her facebook page - as the new thumb-nail - or the announcement of another birth still gives me pause or pulls me up short sometimes. It isn't that I am not happy for them but despite my wanting it to not be so it is tinged for me with my own frustrated desires. But I guess I want my frustrated desires only to tinge my sense of things - not to spill over onto others. And yet I know and can see that her concern for me in that moment was truly an expression of love and care. One that perhaps missed the mark or maybe hit it square on and this is why it stung.