Jealousy Dissected October 22, 2004
I’m beyond jealous. I can’t help it sometimes. Isn’t it human nature to be envious of people who have what you want? I find myself reading blogs and message boards and thinking jealous thoughts. It’s not like I’m not happy for other people, especially my friends, but man, I can’t help but get jealous sometimes.
I’m jealous of people who get pregnant on their first IVF.
I’m jealous of people who get pregnant with twins on their first IVF.
Hell, I’m really jealous of people who get pregnant without IVF.
I’m jealous of people who have insurance that covers IVF.
I’m jealous that they don’t have to go into major debt.
I’m jealous of people who get to buy a new car or new furniture when we’re spending that $ on IVF.
I’m jealous of people who are adopting.
I’m jealous that they were able to make that leap when I am not- yet.
I’m jealous that they will, more likely than not, be holding actual children in their arms while I’ll still be poking needles into my flesh.
I’m jealous of people who don’t get jealous.
Don’t get me wrong. I am so grateful for many things in my life, but sometimes it really hurts when things have to be so hard. It hurts to get the short end of the stick.
I’ve stopped posting on a couple of message boards that I basically lived on while I was cycling. Now it’s just too hard to watch people post about heartbeats and morning sickness and baby names. There’s one group that I’ve been particularly avoiding lately. I just don’t fit in anymore. Quite a few of the girls are pregnant and quite a few are still in the midst of their first IVFs. Obviously I’m neither. I can’t relate to all of the pregnant talk nor can I relate to the optimism of the first time IVFers, so I’ve stopped posting.
I don’t like being a jealous person, but I can’t help it sometimes. I just wish I could be jealous about something other than all of this baby stuff.
I just typed jealous into a thesaurus. There were a bigillion synonyms but a couple stood out to me. One was selfish. Yes, I guess I am being selfish. I want what others have. Me, me, me. That’s the part of being jealous that makes me feel like crap sometimes, but there was another synonym that jumped out at me: yearning. That’s exactly it. I have this relentless yearning to have a child. We all know what yearning means, but the actual definition is “To have a strong, often melancholy desire.” That’s just dead on for me. My desire to have a child is so strong, but it’s often times tempered with sadness. So, now when I start to get jealous I’ll just think of that yearning. It’s not that I’m evil spirited, it’s just that my heart is yearning for a child.
- Posted in : various other ramblings
- Author : amanda
Comments»
Good!
I am very yearning too.
You’re entitled to whatever feelings get conjured
up through this process…be selfish, be jealous, be angry…I’d be more worried about you if you weren’t feeling these things.
Love you!
Fortunately I have found that jealousy chnges over time. After finding out we can’t have bio kids, I was mad with jealously. Each day, I find it lessening, as I move on with my life towards something positive. I think the important thing about jealously is not getting stuck in it for a long time. If this happens, we will become bitter old ladies crashing our Costco carts into others because they’re in our fucking way.
Marla
Middle Way
I have also found the jealousy diminishes over time. I used to feel it so intensely, these days it is just a little pin prick. Good for you for dissecting it and coming up with a more positive interpretation. Feels good to rise above, but it’s soooo hard.
Kim
can I join your jealousy club?
Amanda,
Because your blog doesn’t have trackbacks, I just wanted to let you know this post has been included in the latest edition of The Sunday Post.
http://www.jellybelly-jj.com/archives/2004/10/24/the-sunday-post-vol-i-iss-viii-double-edition/
Ah, the green eyed monster. Yep, know it kinda well myself, somedays worse than others. I think it’s a natural part of the IF process so I too would be more inclined to worry about you if you said you didn’t experience these feelings from time to time.
But, man, are there days when I do want to be one of those (younger) women crashing my shopping cart into people at Costco like Marla said–simply because they’re in my effin’ way–but more often because they’ve got kids in their pushcart and I don’t. *Sigh*
Oh Amanda, I totally relate to this post!! I think I am the queen of jealousy. Of course, I get jealous every single time I see a woman with her baby but I’m also jealous of lots of other things -
people who make a lot of money
people who have nice houses
people who have nice clothes/jewelry/cars
people who are tall
people who have beautiful skin
people who have wonderful parents
This list goes on and on. There are so many things that I am jealous of, and I hate that. I wish I could change this about myself, and just see all of the good things I have in my life. It’s just hard when it seems everything is a struggle. But this is part of life and I’ll find a way to deal with it.
I know one day, other women will be jealous of us! We’ll have our babies, if not the other things we wish we could have. Best of luck to you with this cycle!
Hi, our son and his wife have not spoken to us for a year. Nor do they speak to some friends. This happened with their first pregnancy as well with different friends. They just became surrounded by egg shells and twisted innocent comments into what they called ‘insensitive comment’. They decided to be jealous of our daughter who had a baby also after trials with a different disorder. They don’t talk to her either now. We can never measure up no matter what we do, we see so much jealousy and self-absorbed behaviour. They have cut off the rest of our children, with whom we have a very loving and close relationship. They seem to become jealous that we had other children to think about as well and even death and ill-health and other needs within the family that took our attention away from them were just not acceptable. The extent of their jealousy knew no bounds. If this happened to you please give us some advice, we cry much and can’t take much more. We are not allowed to see our grandchildren and have never even seen the new baby, not so much as a photograph. We are just ordinary, generous people and can not see that anything we are meant to have done, warrants the vindictiveness. I have read how stress and the IVF treatment can turn couples into self-centred monsters. We only want to understand and help them and to reconcile with them but feel at a loss on how to do it.