Is Wayne Brady going to have to have a baby?

Crap.  I did not see this coming.  I am hopeful it is just a confluence of ovulation, bleach fumes, and Facebook-itis (when you think everyone's Facebook life is both real, and better than yours).  That she had a baby isn't a surprise.  I knew she was pregnant, knew when she was due, even knew that she had the baby.  She isn't the first of my friends to have a baby, either.  Still, when I got the email, I felt...I don't know.    It's a little like I'm rooting against her happiness, against further, tighter bonds with her husband.  I am still struggling to reconcile how her being with him challenges what I think I understand about who she is.  

There is a more significant component to this though.  That email, introducing the product of their union reminds me of our plan.  That we would go to Vegas when we were 40, find some sturdy young men, hopefully get pregnant, and raise our children together on our commune in Colorado.  She just turned 41, and I just turned 40.  She's in Colorado.  

I'm incredulous, sincerely, that I feel anything at all akin to sadness, jealousy, envy, wistfulness, whatever this is.  I have never felt this way before about anyone's joy.  I've even thought it odd that I don't envy anyone's life, because so many people act as if I should.  That I should want what they have, or want what they think I need.  But I haven't.  I still don't envy or want her life, but I am surprisingly emotional about her having a child.  I may have really wanted that silly notional Vegas plan, or at least the part that saw me not waiting for or needing to be part of a couple to be a mom, but still having someone to do it with.  I read her email and thought, oh crap, is this where and when I stop being ambivalent about having a baby?  I suppose there is no such thing as good timing for something as life altering as reconsidering having a child, but with the year this has been, I will consider nothing that life-altering seriously.  More than anything I'm reeling that her standard, 'hey everyone, we had a baby' email rocked my world like it did.  I do still smell bleach in my nostrils, so it is possible I just need to crack a window and my brain will recover.  Worth a try.

That's when they lost me

When she said they loved me.  I had to bite my tongue.  Love me?  You don't even know me.  And please don't refer to me as "Auntie" to your children.  It is offensive to their actual aunt(s) and to me, being patronized with a familial title.  We know so little of one another, there is no way I am a close friend.  I have never had anything beyond a table top philisophical discussion with you.  It is easy to confuse shared confidences with friendship.  A similar thing happens with sex all the time (being intimate versus intimacy).  Don't get me wrong, I think you are lovely, but it is offensive and insulting to me when you say you love me and I have no evidence of that in my life.  I sincerely do not resent that you do not actually love me, really I don't, though I am clearly angry writing this.  I resent the hollowness of the sentiment of love expressed by you.  It does not match up with what we are to one another and I do not like that word flung around, especially in times of despair, like it means something between us.  I talked to a near stranger because I knew I could not count on you to respond to an email--that radio silence, though it might have been benign and filled with intention to respond, did not erase my need for a safe space to vent.  And that is why I get so angry when again my life is around my ears, I am now in the same time zone and within driving distance and I might as well be across the ocean.  I expected more from you because you insisted we are more.  I will now treat our relationship how it is in practice which means I will see you when I see you.  I will not extend myself to be a part of your life as I did in the past, responding to your sentiment and ignoring your inaction.  I do not consider us enough to even invest in this discussion with you.  I would rather it be a benign extraction that naturally works itself out over time until we are down to 2-3 times a year greeting.  I welcome that.  I look forward to no longer having to endure your sentiment absent of action without alternatives.  I will have genuine friends and I will be one as well.  One day...