On to my next issue

I feel like I have to write something today because by this time tomorrow I should be a hormonal crying mess. (AF should arrive today and I have no hope of the other outcome.)

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I did get an email back from "Reed's mom" last week. She said she was sorry that their choice caused me more pain and that she would respect my wishes regarding future Christmas cards. Really there isn't anything that she could do to fix things, but I am glad that I got my feelings out and that she seems to have heard me. I guess that's the end of that.

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So what did happen after my yoga class on Wednesday? Well first I have to explain some history. (I will try not to ramble but this is going to be long so I apologize now.) I wrote about M here and a few other times while I was cyber-stalking her, waiting for her to announce her son's arrival. She also is the person who sent out the baby announcements with pictures of her son sleeping. (Definitely a sign of things to come as far as her level of understanding goes.)

M is (maybe "was" is a better term right now) one of my oldest friends and a distant cousin as well so our families are also intertwined (which means my mom has also pressured me to make nice with her too). She was pregnant when Reid died and after the end of April, I didn't hear from her until the end of June when she was about to start her maternity leave. She wanted to come see me and after thinking about it and deciding it would be easier to meet her son if I saw her first, I emailed her back. I never heard back from her. In fact I heard nothing until the mass birth announcement email and then nothing again until the end of October when she emailed and made excuses about why she hadn't contacted me for months but wanted to come and bring her son to meet me. I wanted to send a huge email about how hurt and angry I was, but D.G. convinced me that I should take a more neutral stance, so I just replied saying I was hurt and wasn't in a place where I could or should make decisions. M replied back that she knew she had screwed up (and that's the closest she's come to apologizing but it was still qualified with excuses) and that she was still there for me.

Then fast-froward to December when we got a Christmas card featuring more baby pictures and no mention of Reid. After that, there was nothing until the week before my birthday, when she called (I let the machine get it) and left a "breezy" message about not having seen each other for a year and how we should talk soon. There was no way I could talk to her and I definitely don't want to play "pretend things are all okay" so D.G. promised to call her and explain where I was. (D.G. has known M as long as he has known me.) However, D.G. is a champion procrastinator so no calls where made. Then I got an email that was so insensitive that it deserves it's own post and I reminded D.G. about calling but he still put it off. And then while I was away visiting my niece last weekend, I got a text from M that I ignored too. (I am not a regular texter, I send about 2 a month so it's not the way to get a hold of me). Wednesday night when I got back from yoga and was feeling all emotional, I ended up giving D.G. a hard time about not calling M and he got all pissed off at me and finally called her just to spite me. He got her voicemail but that only bought him a half hour until she called back. Turns out he was hoping that I would just forget about his promise and eventually just miss M enough that I would be willing to play "pretend things are all okay". He is such a typical "don't talk about your feelings" man sometimes.

When she called back, I ran for the bedroom and turned up the TV so I wouldn't hear his side of the conversation. He also took the phone downstairs so he could talk as loudly as he wanted without me or D hearing. (D was in bed by this time, but you never know when a 3 year old will wake up to go potty.) They talked for over an hour and by the time D.G. came to bed, it was obvious he had been crying while on the phone with M. I'm not sure what all they talked about but he said he made it clear how hurt I was by her lack of contact and by her pretending things were fine and we had just lost touch. Apparently she realized how insensitive the email was but somehow sending another to apologize just didn't occur to her. He said she wants to do better at being supportive but just didn't know how so she focused on her own issues. (And I can admit some bad things have happened to her family in the last 6 months, but nothing on the scale of dead or dying baby or other close family member). D.G. asked her why she doesn't talk to our mutual friend R who has been very good as supporting me despite having no first hand DBM experience. M and R see each other regularly so I can't understand how one understands so much and the other so little. I don't know what's going to happen now, but apparently the last attempts at communication were part of her plan to contact us once a week so I should have until next week until we hear from her again. I guess what I do will depend on how much of a hormonal crying mess I am.

(If you made it through all that, thank you. I have needed to get this out of my head for months but it never felt like I could explain things right until now.)