This post has sat in my drafts folder for a a few months. Reading it, you'll understand why.
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When I first started blogging almost three years ago, I blogged for me. I didn't care who read my blog... I was just excited to take all the thoughts swimming in my head and write it down, because I am a writer. Not by profession, but in life.
I have notebooks of short stories and poems. Writing was an outlet for me as a young girl. It even got me in trouble more than a few times. I lost that in my early twenties and coming here to THIS BLOG was my re-emergence into writing. I found joy in that.
My early posts were all over the map.... thoughts on parenting, life, people... and things. Handbags.... favorite foods.... likes/dislikes. I was never part of the elite "mommy blogger" circle. I stayed under the radar.
And around the same time as this blog was born I had my first miscarriage. And then another, and another, and another.
Somehow I crossed the line of writing about "stuff" to writing about lots of deep feelings. Over the course of time, I started reading infertility blogs and making connections with others. Developing common bonds.
And then it got complicated.
All of a sudden I was an infertile. My posts became heavily slanted to infertility. My readership went through the roof. Women came in droves to support me.
Just as many sent me hate mail. Because, having secondary infertility is different to some. I once got an anonymous comment to a post after one of my miscarriages that "I was SELFISH.... " and, "You should be happy that you have ONE child because some of US have NONE".
Well, well, I guess you set me straight.
I deleted that comment, because it stung so bad. But as level-minded as I was at the time, I figured, well, there's always one idiot in the bunch... and I ignored it. But guess what? I got e-mails like that more and more. I even had some (again, anonymous) that deemed me "CRAZY for putting my BODY though five miscarriages."
Oh, there were many days I could have just wrote a post with this phrase "Fuck Off".
But just as welcoming it was to be a part of a virtual network of "positive" support.... that support that I treasured started to wane. Comments started to slow down, and as my fellow infertiles became pregnant and had their beautiful babies... I was left in the dust. And I, the doormat to the blogging world, still reading their blogs... but they are not reading mine. Crazy, since among all this infertile mess, I am still a Mom, and so are they.
How is it that a person can just disconnect so easily? For me, I never set up my RSS reader to ignore my pregnant blogging friends, so why were they ignoring me?
I blogged many times over my real-life family and friends who ignore me. This isn't an exaggeration... it's the truth I hate to think about. It's as if I have a disease, and if they ask how I am doing they might catch it. It HURTS so deeply when I shared such intimate detail of my treatments that no one asks how I am. It's the purest form of rejection.
But I never, EVER expected my blogging friends to give up on me too. But, many have.
Is it because I am not truly a textbook infertile? Is it because they are sick of hearing how often I keep failing?
Somehow, along the way I got wrapped up in the feedback and the comments. There were many days that the comments kept me from totally going nuclear. I loved the support (I still do), but now I find myself in the same place with the blogging community as I am with my real life-community.
I am invisible.
And, for this reason my love for blogging is waning. I am tired of being judged. So I censor my posts (if you've been wondering why my posts have been so generic). And that makes me more angry because THIS is my blog. This started as a place for me to be me.
I know that this situation is not unique. Two of my fellow bloggers are pondering "where do I go from here?" for entirely different reasons.
The truth is... I've shared almost 500 posts to the world (on this site, anyway). And I am just now understanding that you can be just as exposed and hurt on the internet as you can anywhere.
Where to go from here.... I don't know.
