The Shower Invite

I got it. I haven't gotten one in almost three years, thank the Lord, but my time was coming. The one I knew was coming but thought that maybe if I forgot about it it would never arrive. But of course, it arrived. The unwelcome Baby Shower Invite. Are any of them really welcome?

The original PG announcement for this one was BRUTAL for me. I sunk into a depression for at least a week. It was the one that threw me into a fit of despair on the bathroom floor, the one that prompted the loudest, most obnoxious sobs my lungs have ever regurgitated. Why Lord? Why her and not me? Why them and not us? Mike changed her diaper for G*d's sake! When he was out of high school! Why must we wait so long? They haven't even been married for 2 years.......and she is so SPOILED and IMMATURE (did I just say that?).

As we all do, I've worked through most of those feelings and have had to accept that once again, others get pregnant, others get to experience the joys and pains of pregnancy, childbirth and childrearing, others get to have this......and we don't. It's a hard pill to swallow.....every. single. time. I try to remind myself that God has this plan for me and someday it will happen for us, but it doesn't take the sting away. Especially when the reminder of what I don't have, all decorated in pink and blue, is staring at me in the face announcing the soon-to-be baby arrival to someone other than me. Again.

Somehow I managed to avoid baby shower invites for 3 years, mostly because the majority of my friends are om their 3rd, 4th and 5th children already. I already know they can procreate. But the newbies......those are hard. the ones that got married 3 years after you did and ten years younger than you did....those are painful.....the ones that tried for all of 3 months and have no idea what it's really like to PAINFULLY LONG for a child,all they had to do was want one and viola.....they got it. Ya, those are extremely difficult.

Thankfully, I have a real excuse to not go to the shower. I really just can't go. Not that I would anyways. All resentment, jealousy and envy aside.........I really have no interest in going to a baby shower. Why go through the torture? Why have to put up with baby and PG talk for 3-4 hours straight, it's emotional suicide. Especially when you have the big red invisible "I" stitched on to your sweater and everyone there knows it. And you know they know. And you know they know you know and it makes you feel like the biggest dysfunctional failure that a woman could ever be. No. Thanks.

So, I will do my duty. I will muster up the courage to go the baby section in the greeting card aisle. I will prepare my eyes to see cute baby pictures and caricatures, congratulations and words of celebration that I have prayed so hard for so many years for which I would someday be on the receiving end. I will pray for strength that I won't break down at the Walgreens for having to face, reach out, physically touch and even pay money for such a harsh reminder of what I can't have but so desperately want. I will put a check in it and write something nice on the inside, while on MY inside I am emotionally dying a bit.

And the worst part of it? the one receiving it will have absolutely NO CLUE of the emotional turmoil the sender had to go through just to get this card in her hands. She will have NO CLUE the grace and composure required just to send it. She will have NO CLUE what it's like to be on the opposite side of that card. That card only means happiness for her. And it only means sadness for me, a sadness she will never experience. May her ignorance be bliss.