Coming Out

I am finally out of the pregnancy closet with friends, family and co-workers. It feels good not to have to hide anymore, especially at work, where I am generally at my most ill. After much experimenting, I’ve pinned down that the pre-natal vitamins seem to play a major part in my constant nausea. When I don’t take them, I feel just about 100% better. A co-worker mentioned that she only took Folic Acid when she was pregnant and didn’t bother with the vitamins. Her son is healthy and fine. I think if I was a major fast food junkie, I would be concerned about nutrients. In fact, I’m more concerned about my nutrients when I’m actually taking the vitamins because the only thing I can choke down is Kraft Dinner and crackers. I’ve always eaten healthy. So, the decision has been made… No more puke-inducing vitamins.

I’m generally met with excitement when letting people know the big news. The only disappointment I’ve really had comes from friends that I haven’t seen in a long time who say "Oh, I thought you’d look more pregnant" . In reality, I’ve only gained about five pounds over the last 14 weeks, and I swear most of it is in my boobs. I actually made a joke the other day in the office, when Ruthie came down to our floor for a visit. A couple of weeks ago, I sent out a massive office email that basically said "The rumors are true, I’m knocked up, I’ve been very sick and that’s why I’ve been lurking around the bathrooms, thanks for your patience, here’s a picture of the alien from my ultrasound, peace out!" and hid behind Minx’s desk until I figured that everyone had read the email ( I was feeling suddenly shy). When I went back to my desk, it was completely mobbed with well-wishers from all over the building. I was pretty overwhelmed with how excited my workies were. I did shed a few tears, although I’m sure that has something to do with hormones. I’ve had a pretty steady stream of visitors at my desk ever since. Anyway, Ruthie came down for a visit a couple of days ago. She’s one of my favorite co-workers, one of the few folks that I’ve known since my first days with the company. We were talking about my pregnancy and she said those familiar words "I thought you’d be showing more…But the only thing bigger is your boobs" I said "Well, I’ve been meaning to tell you guys… I lied, I’m actually not pregnant. I had breast enlargement surgery. I was hoping you would be so excited about my new figure that you’d forget about the actual baby part" Minxy laughed until she cried. Earlier in the day, we had been giggling over pictures of my cousin, who is pregnant as well, but almost three weeks ahead of me. She’s posted pictures on Facebook of her belly almost every week and it’s massive already. I’m only three weeks behind her, have barely a bump, but breasts that would make a pornstar blush. Every time I start to think "My God, look… My baby belly is here", I end up having to go to the bathroom for the first time in three days (not joking) and coming out normal sized again. Ruthie, Minx and I unanimously decided that instead of posting belly pictures, I should just post pictures of my ever-growing chest…Not that I ever would, but we died laughing at the thought of it.

I’ve gotten a lot emails over the past couple of weeks from friends, and it’s looking to be a pretty exciting summer. One of my dearest friends Adam will be coming home from Holland for a month this summer with his wife, Marieke. I think I wrote about Addie a long time ago in this journal. I can’t remember when or why. Anyway, he’s one of my oldest friends and I’m definitely looking forward to having his presence in my life again, even if it’s just for a few weeks. Addie and Marieke come back every couple of years for a visit. We always have a great time getting the gang together, and finding a place to relax in the mountains for a few days. My friend Tanjay sent me a message stating that her and her husband will be moving back home after their years in NYC. They should be back in early June, then will go to Croatia for a month, be back for Addie’s visit, and be staying back in the city permanently. I was talking to Nelly about this tonight and we are both over the moon that Tanjay is coming back. Her and Brendan have been gone for so long, and couldn’t come back for visits due to problems with their Visas. Also, my other Adam (I have two really good friends named Adam) will be back this summer with his girlfriend (They are both teachers in Hippyland, B.C). Hooray for friend reunions! The general hum is that we’ll probably end up at Adam’s parent condo in Fernie, BC for a few days. It’ll be nice to have us all together again.

The excitement over this reunion has gotten me thinking about my friendship break with Midnight Trump. It’s been coming for a couple of years now, but she finally nailed a line with me in our last conversation… I haven’t spoken to her since then and I’m really not planning to contact her again for a long while. Our friendship has definitely soured over the last little while.

I’m having a hard time accepting this, because we’ve known each other for so long. We went to High School and University together. We’ve been through a lot. I’ve had friends tell me over and over that the person that I’m holding onto isn’t Trump anymore. Our Trump is gone and she’s been replaced with someone else. This person is selfish, only thinks about herself, is rude, feels that she is superior to everyone else and is not the friend I think she is. It turns out they were right, and I was foolish to keep her in my life after all this time. I kept inviting her out to join us for events, despite so many of our friends having already decided that they didn’t want to spend time with her anymore. I kept insisting that she didn’t act that way with me, that she didn’t act like she was superior, and that we always had common ground when we were out. I felt that the reason she was being standoffish with the others was because she could sense that they didn’t want to have anything to do with them anymore. I was wrong about everything. Clearly, it just wasn’t my turn yet.

The strain on our friendship started about two years ago in Greg, Minx and I’s Yellow House on the Corner in Tuxedo. Actually, at that point, Minx had moved out of the basement suite and in with her future hubby, and Greg and I were sharing the house with Crazy Rik in the basement (As you can imagine, Crazy Rik was indeed Crazy. Greg and I ended up moving out of that house not long after his first display of nutterness)

Anyway, Greg and I smoked until about two years ago, and in the Yellow House we had a massive screened in porch tent that housed our patio furniture and the hot tub. It was set up really nice with lanterns and candles. We used it a lot in the summertime, and would often have friends over to sit and chat any day or night. Midnight Trump had only a small patio at the time, and she really liked to come over and smoke cigarettes and drink wine in the tent. Well, that summer two years ago, Greg and I quit smoking cold turkey, and we ended up cutting out wine and sitting outside for extended periods of time, I guess just because we associated it with smoking. We didn’t make an arrangement or anything… We just stopped doing it for about a month. Trump still wantedto have evening visits, so I would invite her over. Sometimes she would bring a friend from school with her and they would go outside on our patio and smoke.  Doesn’t sound too weird, right? Except that I would set up the house for entertaining, they would arrive at the house, say "We’re just going to pop outside for a smoke" and then sit out on the patio for almost an hour talking while I waited for them inside. They would come inside to fill up, chat for a little while and then go outside again. When I finally broached the subject, and said "You know, Greg and I actually prefer to sit inside then outside right now, and we don’t really want to surround ourselves with too much smoking while we’re still struggling with getting rid of cigarettes for good". She was all "Oh yeah, that’s fine… I can come over and we’ll hang out inside". However, she stopped visiting that summer. I didn’t think it was a huge deal, but it definitely struck me as odd.

Around that time, Faye and Nells started to talk about how Midnight only ever talked about herself and her teaching. They started saying that she talked so much, they couldn’t get a word in edgewise and she wouldn’t listen to their opinions or thoughts without interrupting them. They said that she would call them, talk on the phone for an hour and they wouldn’t have any input to the conversation. Any trips to the pub or out for coffee and it was the same thing. When we went out, I would watch for this and I definitely noticed it. It reminded me of this friend Adam and I had when we were still in High School named Graham. He clearly had something missing and was definitely lacking in social skills. He would talk and talk and talk (insert Simpsons reference here) and talk and talk (Insert another Simpsons reference here). It didn’t matter if you were there or not. He once called Adam’s house when I was over, and he talked on the phone for over two hours. The big joke was that we all sat around the table (Adam,Myself,  his Mom, his Dad, His Brother, and his Sister) and passed Graham around on the phone saying "Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh" for the entire two hours while the rest of us chatted. Graham was so involved with talking to himself about himself that he didn’t realize that he was speaking with six different people. (That’s one of Adam and I’s favorite stories to tell) Anyway, Trump’s behavior reminded me a lot Grahams. The difference is that I knew she has social skills. I knew that she was intelligent and aware of her surroundings. I couldn’t understand why she was acting like that, and I felt sorry for the people she cornered when we were out. I would say to Nells and Faye, "I don’t get it. She’s not like that when she’s just with me… We have normal conversations and everything is fine" Eventually Nells and Faye hit their breaking point with Trump, and confronted her about her behavior. She didn’t take it very well, and the friendship between them dissolved fairly quickly.

I’ve been running between them for the last little while, still inviting Midnight out for coffee and beers with the group, making sure she’s till invited to birthday parties, etc. When Gregor and I moved to the first house in our crazy arty neighborhood (The DIVE) we ended up moving about two blocks away from Trump. I was pretty excited because I loved the neighborhood and was really looking forward to having a friend so close. It ended up getting weird fairly quickly after that. Trump and I would take long walks through the neighborhood, to coffee shops and down along the river… but it just started to become un-enjoyable. She would talk the whole time about herself, the problems with her job, her mortgage, how she had never been in a real relationship, that she was always single and about her strained friendship with Nells and Faye. It was abundantly clear that she wasn’t interested in my input or ideas. She made it very clear to me that she felt that I had everything that I needed in life and hardly deserved it. I would try to point out, "Hey, you’ve got an awesome career, own your own place… Greg and I are still renting and drifting around. You’ve just chosen to focus on a different area of your life. You’re just on a different path, that’s all"  However, she would interrupt and continue on with her ranting, very much stuck in her own world. It was during one of those walks where she asked me a question about my work (a miracle!) but then I realized that she actually had no idea where I was working, even though I had been with the same company for going on 6 years. I then figured out that she did not know anything about what was going on in my life, nor did she care to know about my opinions or thoughts. I was there to be her sounding board.

I should mention that around this time, Trump was starting to arrive later and later when we had plans… Habitual tardiness is a habit that I can barely tolerate in people…Anyone who is a friend of mine can attest to that.  I ended up confronting her about that, and she chose not to rectify her behavior. So, one day when we had plans to ride our bikes to meet Faye and Nells at Prince’s Island, she called to say she was running about 45 minutes behind schedule. I said, "Sorry, I promised F & N that I would be there at 12:30pm. I don’t want to be late, so I’m not going to wait for you… I’m leaving right now" and rode my bike out to meet my punctual friends. Trump was so angry (but apparently still wanted to meet us) that she rode her bike down alone, met us at the Park lounging around on our little blanket, proceeded to ignore us and act snarky for the entire afternoon… Then she got up and left without saying anything. That day was really the second milestone in our unraveling. She slowed her calls to me and started calling Nells again. Nells would often mention that she spent a lot of time ignoring her phone calls, or regretting that she answered the phone.

Things started happening one after the other: Greg would get annoyed because Trump would call and ask him to do repairs on her bike, but not offer to do anything in return. She would use our garage as a storage shed because her condo didn’t have enough space. Greg asked her to check on the fur babies while we went away for a week as a repayment for the bike repairs, and her answer was "We’ll see"… After that we didn’t hear from her for a month. When we moved into our shiny new apartment (a couple of blocks away from The Dive House) she didn’t come over to help, even though we’d helped her in her last two moves. Faye started telling Nells and I that Trump would call her to complain about our "Fairy Tale" lives. She said that it felt like she was being recruited for something, that Midnight was trying to get her to start bitching about her own life (Faye is our other perpetually single friend…Although, she is seeing a fella right now, which started a couple of months ago). When November came, it was Trump’s Birthday, and I was trying to organize a group dinner for her. She stalled me at every turn and wouldn’t help me pick a place for the party. When Nells, Faye and I finally chose, she was unhappy with the choice of restaurant and made that very clear while we were out for dinner.  When Nells, Faye, Midnight Trump and I threw our 23rd of DecemberChristmas Get Together, Midnight was clearly not happy to be there, stayed only for an hour or so, was apparently really short with Faye and Nells (I didn’t notice that… Too much mulled wine, I guess. However, they both announced to me that after that night, they were done with Trump), Didn’t show up to my birthday party brunch, sent me an email a week later saying that she had slept in. I’ve tried having a couple of coffees with her, have gone to a show or two, but basically… Well, my heart just isn’t in it anymore.

The nail in the coffin of our friendship came when I called her about two weeks ago to tell her the news that I was pregnant. Faye, Minx and Nells had known for awhile, but I had pretty much hidden it from all of my friends until I hit my three months. I decided that there were a few friends that I wanted to speak with directly, some (mostly out of townies) would be informed via email, and the rest could find out by word of mouth or via Facebook. Trump was someone I wanted to speak to directly. I called her at about 8:00pm, just as I was getting ready to go to bed (Hey! I’m pregnant and sick, remember???). We had the standard greeting and I was all " I have something to tell you" and she was all "What?" and I said "I’m three months pregnant" (….Insert Long Silence Here….) I hear the long silence, and decide to fill it with chatter, so I launch into "I’ve been soooo sick and hermit-ting, I haven’t seen anyone in 8 weeks, I can barely make it into work, I’m in bed by 8:30 every night, Greg’s really happy, we’re going to stay in the apartment, blah blah blah" (Insert more Long Silence Here) Finally, she says "That’s…. exciting news" in a really flat voice. My brain starts racing really quickly, and I finally realize that the reason she’s being so flat is because she’s making this pregnancy news about HER and HER problems and HER life. Before I could react to that, she says "I have to go, I have a friend coming over to drop something off and she’s going to be here any minute". I say "Oh, okay" and she says "Congratulations" and hangs up. I’m left sitting on my bed with the phone in my hand, and my head spinning. I briefly consider calling her back and saying "Hey Midnight! Remember when I called you about five minutes ago to say that I was pregnant? What I really meant to say was FUCK YOU" and hanging up. I decide against doing that. I have to be above such things. I am, after all, Somebody’s Mother now.

So, Somebody’s Mother picked up the phone and made her next call. She called Joce to break the big news. Joce squealed and was so excited that it made Somebody’s Mother burst into tears. However, that second phone call made Somebody’s Mother realize that you need to nurture and love the good ones, and sometimes you have to give up the broken, poisonous ones and leave them in the corner to wilt and fade.

So, that’s the extremely long story of how I loved and lost Midnight Trump.

I had other things I wanted to talk about, but I am so completely exhausted right now that I can’t continue.

Shall we continue this chat another day?

…Sorry I didn’t let you get a word in edgewise… That kind of behavior reminds me of someone I used to know.