I Ain't Mad At'Cha

Look, I know there are people who are afraid to reach out to me because they worry they will offend me.  I know that people are closely monitoring what they are saying because they think I will get mad at them.  I also know that sometimes when I write about something that hurt me, lots of people think, "She is talking about me!".  I want to address this.  While many, many people (most) have said things that have hurt me....99.9% of all of those people were coming from a good place.  Sometimes Ted hurts me.  Often my parents hurt me.  I am learning that nobody has the right thing to say because there is no right thing to say.  Losing Max is just terrible.  It just is.  I received a beautiful email last week from an old family friend and I didn't write her back right away, mostly because what she had written was so personal and so meaningful to me that I wanted to be able to sit down and think about my response so that she would know how much I appreciated it.  When I didn't write back, her family told her that she never should have sent the email, that it probably offended me.  They also meant well.  I would say again MOST people mean well.  There are certain comments that hurt me in the beginning that don't hurt me now so much.  The first few months were so raw, I couldn't see straight.  I felt really hurt when people tried to act like nothing had happened and honestly, that still hurts my feelings but I understand better now that most people are just uncomfortable acknowledging our loss.  In the beginning, I hated when people would flippantly ask me, "What's up?" or "How's it going?" or even "How are you?".  I still don't like the first two very much but if someone is asking how I am, and they actually want to know the answer, I appreciate it.  A lot of people said (and say) to me things like, "Don't worry, you can have more babies".  Again, I understand now, they just say this because they don't really get it and what they really mean is that THEY will be more comfortable with us when there is a new baby.  They don't realize that while a new baby would bring happiness back into our lives, we will still feel the exact same grief of having lost Max.  Also, until I have another baby that survives infancy, I won't even necessarily believe that I can have more babies.  If you compared the loss of my Max to the loss of your dog, you hurt my feelings...but, again, I understand better now that you just don't understand.  I am not mad at you.  I would just advise you to not make that (or similar) comparison when you encounter people who have lost someone they love in the future.  Now, there are people who have genuinely hurt me so badly that I really want nothing to do with them ever again.  That is sort of inevitable.  And, when I have written about those instances on my blog, I have dumbed them down to protect the identity of the person I am writing about and/or what happened was so hurtful, I don't even want to get into all of the details.  I am talking about a handful of people.....people that in retrospect have, for the most part, been hurtful to me always...not just after Max passed.  You are most likely not one of them.  I actually think I have confronted almost all of them, so if you haven't been confronted by me, I wouldn't really think twice.  And, I will admit, I am disappointed in some people who I thought would be here for me and haven't been. Again, I am not mad at them either.  They have done the best they could and I forgive them for not having the strength to confront this horror.  It takes a unique kind of person.  I am so lucky that I befriend a little Bianca on the playground at Third Street School, that I instantly bonded with a hilarious girl at work named Marla, and that I received a random phone call from a distant cousin from Mexico City almost ten years ago.  These people and others just happen to have wonderful coping and relating skills.  I am lucky.  So, listen, there is hardly a thing you could say that would really offend me that much.  I have pretty much outlined all of the doozies.  If you have reached out to me with good intent in your heart, I have seen it and it doesn't matter that you have said something that hurt me.  Plenty of the people who have stuck by me have said things that were hurtful.  In many cases, I have just told them that what they said hurt me and then we have moved on.  I am also sure that I have said many things that are hurtful over the past 6 months as well.  I am learning how to do this also and it isn't easy from this side either.  

In finally some good news - Ted's Giants are going to the Superbowl!  He is very excited about it!  Ted deserves to have something to be happy about this year.  Go Giants!