Friday, February 18, 2011

Starting to work on my issues

I am have so much anger locked up inside me. I have shoved the anger down so many times, but it keeps coming back up to the surface but I don't know how to deal with it. Most of the anger is directed towards people in my life who I feel have let me down in the last 10 months. Most of these people live far away from me so I don't have to worry about running into them at the grocery store, but it makes even harder to figure out how to deal with all this anger. You can't call people up and start yelling at them (because really I want to yell and scream) bcause they can just hang up on you, but I need to start dealing with these feelings before they consume me. I've tried to just let things go and basically just write these people off as not worth my time but that's not working.

I've decided that I need to do something about the "friend" who named her son Reed in November first. (All the details are here in case you haven't memorized all my posts.) Okay, that sounds like I'm going to hire a hit man. I'm angry but not quite that angry. My plan is write a short but not sweet letter saying that I'd appreciate if she took me off her Christmas card list (yes we got a Christmas card including a family picture and a baby announcement) because I'd rather not add to the stress/sadness of Christmas by reading about how her Reed is growing up, (cause he's alive) and doing all the things that my Reid will never do (cause he's dead). There may also be something about how insensitive it is to send said baby announcement to the parents of a dead baby with nearly the same name but I have yet to figure wording that conveys how I really feel.

Getting this off my chest is healthy, right? I just can't imagine that just writing the letter and not sending it is going to be enough to help me feel better. And I just can't imagine that my feelings about getting annual updates about her Reed (and her other 3 boys, yes she managed to have 4 kids in just over 6 years so she's also ridiculously fertile on top of everything else) will change so I can't see regretting sending this letter. I guess I just have to decide whether I send the pictures from the Christmas card back to her or toss them in the trash here. What would you do?

10 comments:

Missy said...

In a moment of passion, I would do all the above in order to make my point well known. In reality, I would think in my head that I could just take the Christmas card and toss it when I see it in the stack, but then I would probably go drag it out and read it coffee grind soaked and all. Then throw a fit for being a bloody masochist and destroy everything in my path. I've learned how to deal with the sadness, it's the anger that is messing with my head. I wish I knew how to just let it go. All my love mama and hoping you find some peace! p.s. seriously the captcha is "caraloci"

Jeanette said...

I'd probably do exactly like Missy.
I wonder if writing that letter, detailing exactly how you feel, without holding back might help? You don't have to send it in that form, but maybe the act of writing it all down might help?
I don't know, I've buried my anger so deep now, I'm terrified of letting it out. x

delaney's mom said...

i have a ton of anger as well. you have a really valid point and i think you should write and send the letter. think it through - take your time and maybe let your husband read it before you send it? over time seeing those updates will just open those wounds and wouldn't allow me to heal (at least as much as you ever do). if the cards/letters came in the mail my curiosity wouldn't allow me to just throw them away. i would have to look and i would cry every time. i think it's cruel and unusual punishment. a woman that works in my building (but i don't know her) had a baby girl around the same time i was due with Lillian. i don't even know the name of her baby, but it hurts to see her joy. i know it sounds mean and spiteful, but it's true. and i think that's normal.

Beth said...

i've had a right ramble in this comment. feel free to ignore it if you don't think it's right for you!

i would write two letters. one where you really go for it and tell her exactly what you think, rant and rave and acknowledge your anger. and one where you are a bit calmer and just ask her to take you off her christmas card list and a little of why. because when it really comes down to it, if she is that blind and insensitive she's never going to 'get it', she's never going to realise how cruel she's been to you. and i think if you send a proper angry letter and she doesn't reply with a gushing apology you're still going to be angry with her - possibly even more so.

i'd also prepare yourself for the possibility of an angry reply from her saying 'how very dare you criticise me just because you lost your baby'. the problem with calling people out on cruel behaviour is that they often just see the criticism of themselves and lash out in return without stopping to consider whether the criticism is justified (as obviously this case is). in fact i'd get DG to watch out for and intercept any reply she sends you so if it's going to annoy you he can destroy it before you ever see it.

and the version where you really let rip, i'd burn it. i know what you say about writing it down and not sending it not really making any difference but honestly, i think expressing your anger like that would help.

didn't sarah n's husband get her a pile of old plates to smash too? i'd have some old plates on standby for after you finish letter writing too. physical release as well as emotional.

it's funny, i had a dream last night that i bumped into the person i'm most angry with. and what did i do? i swallowed it down. i let her hug me. i didn't say a word. i let her talk to me as if we were still friends. and even though it was just a dream i'm angry with myself that i didn't let rip. i'm unlikely to do so if i ever do bump into her (and she only lives a couple of miles away so it's not impossible that that would happen) so why couldn't i allow myself to do it in the dream with no repercussions? not fair.

i do believe you need to deal with this anger. and maybe saying that has made me realise that i need to deal with mine too. dammit. i thought i was ignoring it quite nicely. ha.

Beth said...

oh and i'd just toss the picture in the trash, why pay money to get rid of it?

Merry said...

I have two things to say. Well, 3.

First, I do not want you to be hurting and I think that writing letters and all the etcs are a good way of dealing with that. I'm not so sure about sending them. Even my 54th draft to my mother about how to stop hurting me resulted in us severing contact.

Second. If you keep getting those letters, you could make it your achievement to just drop it unopened in the bin. Or send it back as addressee unknown.

And thirdly - god, you'll probably hate me for this... once upon a time, someone I cared about who couldn't have all the children she wanted, vented herself at me for having had 4 children in 6 years. And it near broke my heart, my whole spirit and my soul because I hadn't known HOW to communicate with her and had worried that cutting her off and ignoring her was more insensitive and thoughtless than trying to treat her as a normal person. I just didn't know how to be, I had no experience of loss and infertility then.

Of course, neither she in her rage, nor I in my unintentional insensitivity,had any idea what was coming in my life. But I do know that I was completely broken hearted to have hurt her and I only did hurt her because I just had no concept of the pain in her soul.

I know you are raging, I really know you are - and yes, you need to get it out. But I just don't know if long term it will help you to have vented it on her - I think it might harm you - and I'd hate that.

Please don't hate me. I know I'm lucky that I've not had too much anger over Freddie. But I do believe that if it is possible, it is better to keep the moral high ground. It feels better in the end.

That said, in that situation, and I was in a similar one with my aunt who sent me a baby boy birthday card this year, sometimes things need to be said. Might the other half do it for you - just a note saying "I hope you won't be offended and I'm sure you'll understand, but to keep C sane, would you mind possibly...?"

car said...

Thank you all for leaving me your thoughts. (And seriously Missy, I had to go look up what a captcha was, I had never actually seen the term before so I learned something unrelated to babyloss today which is good.) I am definitely part of the group that couldn't just chuck the card into the garbage without reading it. (At the very least I would have to open it to see if it was eligible for the recycling bin and that would lead to reading it.)

And Merry I don't hate you for not understanding babyloss/IF before it happened to you. (I certainly didn't get it 11 months ago.) The fact that my "friend" has 4 living kids wouldn't be a cause for rage had she not used my son's name for the 4th kid. I would still likely envy her and I would still be including her with group of people who I am disappointed with for the lack of real support, but there wouldn't be this anger and I wouldn't need to remove her from my life.

Merry said...

Yeah, I know. I'd be utterly gutted if any of my friends did that to me. When I was pregnant with Freddie, one of my group of friends took me aside to make sure I wasn't planning to use the name of a lost baby of a person I wasn't in communication with at the time, although we were part of the same group. Despite the fact that we really were not close, I still absolutely would NOT have done it.

Big Love, Big Acceptance - or so I say said...

This is a tough one. I agree with everyone else's comments about writing a "real" letter for yourself - don't hold back anything. And then write a "gentler" version for this woman. I think B makes a great point that she probably won't get it.

I've written my family I think one letter that was pretty real, but tempered down a bit. One of my biggest challenges behind that was thinking through what kind of response I was hoping for, and how I would handle the reality when family probably couldn't respond how I would like them to. Before I sent the letter, I asked myself what I was hoping for/needing in response... and if sending the letter was what I needed most for me, regardless of how people responded, I would send it. Sometimes you just need to get something off your chest to help let it go. But if I think the risk of a crappy response will be too hard for me, I keep the letter to myself as a journal entry and as my very personal way of working through things and letting them go.

I think it's great that you're acknowledging anger and working through it. My therapist would be proud. :) She likes to help me get in touch with my anger, and she pushes me and uses the word rage too (yikes - god forbid I feel RAGE about something/something!). For me, it feels like a humbling, helpful and cathartic process at times.

There's my ramble for ya!

Anonymous said...

Well, I would LOVE to write a nasty note and tell her off...but I have to say that I had a friend use one of my child's names as her kids name and to this day, our friendship hasn't been the same. All i can think is...if you TRULY were a friend, you would have at least ASKED me or PREPARED me for using my kids name. What are people thinking? I think it would be healthy to write a letter, but seriously, I'm in the same boat and I will probably never write a letter.

Good luck in your decision!