My friend Eric and I have a running joke about his status as a “noncon” — a non-confrontational person. It’s not that he’s reluctant to speak his mind or stand up for himself. He’s just not raring for a fight, or eager to push things where they wouldn’t go naturally. It’s a virtue — but that doesn’t mean I can’t hassle him about it.

The other half of the joke, of course, is that I’m a “con.” I’ll push the discussion into difficult places, or ask the awkward question, or seize on a fledgling debate. I’ll even start an argument, if I think that’s what needs to happen to resolve things. Or not resolve them. Either way.

It makes for a good balance: I dig into his thoughts, and he keeps me from flailing when flailing isn’t necessary.

I was thinking yesterday, however, that the funniest thing about the whole joke is that it’s just not true. Not even a little bit.

Sure, I can be blunt.

And yes, sometimes I’ll start pushing on some issue when most people would just let it lie.

But if there is a term for an extreme level of non-confrontational behaviour — the kind of behaviour that places you in a separate time zone from challenges and conflict — that’s far closer to the reality of who I am.

Not that I can avoid everything that would cause me pain. Not that I would even know how.

If I can, though?

I will literally put difficulty and risk so far out of my consciousness that it ceases to exist.

Especially when facing it head on is exactly what I should do.

It never actually ceases to exist, anyway. It just sits like a signal fire at the edge of my peripheral vision, telling me something is needed from me… some sort of action or response or commitment. Letting me know it’s not going out just because I ignore it. Letting me know it continues to burn. Still, I won’t turn to look because then I’d have to put it out, and I have no idea how.

I hate it.

I do it all the time.

In fact, more than anything else, “avoidance” has been the watchword of my life for nearly four years now… maybe more.

I went through my early and mid-twenties as the girl who would do or be anything for anyone who needed me. Nothing made me happier than spending 25 hours a day pushing myself to see everyone and talk to everyone and help everyone and do what they asked me to do. It didn’t matter if I didn’t want to do something, or if it made me uncomfortable. It didn’t even matter if it hurt me.

What mattered was my willingness, my availability, my capacity to step into the waves and keep things together when the water went over my head.

For a long time, I defined myself as a friend and a daughter and a worker before I was anything else. My entire identity was subject to relationships and tasks — the classic Honours student approach to life. If I got things wrong, if I showed reluctance, if I disappointed someone… well, that was anathema to me. There was no greater virtue than self-sacrifice, even if I was actually doing it to make myself feel valuable.

Selfishness cropped up now and then, usually with the people closest to me, because I felt safe to push back a little. The need for approval would win out in the end, though, and my fear of not living up to expectations. If I was an asshole, I could beat myself up far longer and far better than anyone else could.

“Trying hard” didn’t mean I got everything right all the time, though… not even most of the time. I made just as many mistakes then as I do now. I would irritate people and “drop the ball” with great facility. Everyone does, right?

But I would store up all my misfires and obsess over them until I started to believe in advance that people would view me as a failure. Until the list of things I’d screwed up had grown so long it started to colour how I saw the world around me.

If a man rejected me, I believed the next one would, too. It didn’t matter why any of them let me go or if they were, in reality, the worst matches for me on the planet. What mattered was my inability to be what they needed me to be.

I’d mysteriously started gaining weight in my teens after being a tiny underweight sprite of an athlete, and I couldn’t make it go away. I’d find out later why, but the whys made no difference.

And the more those kinds of rejection happened, the more I’d see it as a pattern and not just a series of random, cruel experiences. I made jokes about it when I would emcee my friends’ weddings. I think back to those speeches now, and I want to cry.

Also, if a friend was angry at me, it meant she would stay that way. It wouldn’t matter if her anger was undeserved or short-term or even real… after all, I could easily invent frustrations for people that they weren’t experiencing. I simply expected them to be disappointed in me.

I certainly was.

I don’t know where all of it came from. Perfectionism? A serious mistrust in the concept of grace? A few wrong relationships at moments where my vulnerability was high? Oh yes… I’d had some seriously shitty friendships over the years that had chipped away at my confidence like nothing else ever will again. But I let them do it, so I couldn’t blame anyone but myself.

I know my parents don’t understand it, because they went out of their way to love me and give me the things I needed and wanted when I was growing up. They still do. I cannot tie a moment of my idiocy back to them. Even when they didn’t get it right, I knew I could go home. I actually had a home… something many, many people lack.

But I would still run headlong into even the most dysfunctional relationships, determined to make them work. I would exist in impossible situations, even when the circumstances were clearly inappropriate and irrational. I did what it took to cancel out my disappointment in who I was. To sleep at night.

When I slept at night, that is.

Then everything changed.

I can remember when things started to turn, but after that, everything is a blur. The catalyst was a mistake I made that a few people in my life reacted to quite negatively — but all things considered, quite rationally. I’d essentially lied about doing something I’d said I was going to do for myself, which is nothing to be proud of. I’d failed to apply to a university program I’d expressed serious interest in.

I had recommendation letters and everything. I had huge amounts of support. It seemed like a great fit.

Then I let people down. I apologized, of course, because I always do, but it wouldn’t go away.

This mistake became representative of so much more than one thing I hadn’t done, or a short period of dishonesty. It became the “final straw” in breaking bonds I hadn’t even known were at risk. Suddenly, I was hearing lists of other things I’d failed to do, things I’d promised, things I’d put up as personal goals.

The funny thing is, they were all things I’d said I was going to do for ME.

My choices. My wants.

For whatever reason, I’d shoved them aside, either because I was terrified of failing or because I wasn’t willing to put the work in to make them happen or because I’d become obsessively focused on something else. And in not doing them, I’d somehow managed to radically disappoint people I loved… disappoint them to such a level that I can remember one of my friends telling me I would need to work to “get back her trust.”

Looking back, I know she said that because she couldn’t stand watching me put my life off anymore to devote time to my screwed-up priorities. She said it because she loved me. She said it because she had faith I would see that this was not the end of the road, but just a bump along the way.

Long story short? I didn’t see it that way.

I could barely see a thing, really.

And that’s right about when I stopped trying.

I took how I believed people saw me — a non-starter — and I embraced it. I could crack jokes for hours about all the guys who’d wanted only to be my “friend.” I could recall ad infinitum all the things I’d said I was going to do that I didn’t do. I could remember every friend who’d ever told me I’d somehow missed meeting their needs. I could call up every single time I screwed up anything, even if I’d put in more heart and effort into the process than anyone could possibly require.

I took all the positive qualities people told me I had — hard worker, solid writer, devoted friend, “life of the party”, “big potential” — and I decided that my mistakes defined me far more.

The leap of logic it took to go from making a mistake to developing a whole persona around mistakes looks just as crazy to me as it does to anyone else I know. But I embraced it with gusto. If people were going to be angry at me for not doing things for myself — even when I’d worked hard to do things for them — I would live down to their expectations.

What I was forgetting is that friendship is not based on how much you do for people. No one who really cares about me has a checklist waiting to be worked through, and if they do, well… those are people I would do well to leave behind.

At that point, however, I figured if my actions weren’t earning me the love and trust I wanted, then nothing would. I was also completely missing the point.

I was trying to earn affection with self-sacrifice, when people were actually begging me to take care of myself– not them. I’d used all the energy and strength I’d put into my friendships to completely sidestep responsibility for my OWN life.

Again, I’m not sure why. Oh, I wish I knew why.

The saddest thing is that it took years of abandoned relationships and feeling self-pity and shame and regret before I realized this was the case.

I had avoided things I’d loved, people I’d loved, opportunities I should have tried for, risks I should have taken, plans I should have made, tests I should have submitted to, problems I should have solved… you name it. Even the moves I did make were somehow tainted with fear.

I left a job behind that nearly broke me in half. But instead of accepting the instability that followed as collateral damage, I saw it as evidence of my own lack of potential.

I took a job to delve into a whole new area of writing and challenge myself. But instead of bracing myself for a learning curve, I would let the wind get knocked out of me every time I had to go back to the drawing board.

I let myself fall for someone. But instead of being honest with him and me and seeing that it wasn’t going to work for eight thousand reasons, I blamed how I looked above all else.

I finally made a series of choices to face up to my health concerns. But instead of realizing that this was the first step to actually feeling good, I was shell-shocked by the news of my infertility and backed way off the process.

I let some friendships go that had been utterly toxic for me. But instead of digging deeper into the ones that fed me, I put up absurd amounts of walls to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.

I became accustomed to disappointment. I grew things I called “boundaries”, but they were really just long books of excuses not to try.

And that brings us to now.

Not quite the coffee-swilling optimist I try for. Not quite the natural product of my own potential. Not quite the woman or daughter or friend I intended to be.

Just… not quite.

And I cannot tell you how sick the ten year-old girl who got all A’s and starred in the school play and won the soccer championship and ran track and passed notes to “boyfriends” and had a thousand dreams of a thousand different lives is of this 33 year-old woman who has made the effort to do approximately .001% of what is possible in her life.

Because she’s still in there. She knows what her plans were. She has no idea how they got derailed so badly.

She wants them to get back on track.

So.

My name is Meg. I’m overweight, I have crooked teeth that make me not want to smile, and I have lots of health concerns. I loathe these things about myself.

I am disorganized, I am a procrastinator, and I have not lived up to my potential.

I am a somewhat shoddy friend to many people I love, and I have been selfish with my time and my emotions. To know what this has done to them breaks my heart.

I am a wicked, wicked girl to try and get to know if you’re a guy — I’m waiting for you to hurt me before I even lay eyes on you.

I make excuses like most people breathe.

And I have let these things be “me” for a long time now, with few other additions to the picture.

I’m done with all of it.

I am setting myself up for a hell of a road back to the real Meaghan Cassie Fowler, the one my parents named and loved and raised, the one that I can see waving at me from the stupid pit I put her in, and the one that all my friends miraculously still manage to care about.

I’m completely terrified.

But you see that girl up there? The one smiling WITH TEETH for the first time ever on her blog?

Yeah. Keep watching.

Because this is going to be good.

Now that’s a hell of a title, no?

If you’re brand new to my blog, you might not know (and hey, that’s just fine! After all, it’s not really something that would come up if I met you at a dinner party, anyway… “Hi! I’m Debbie!” “Oh, hi! I’m Meg! I’m infertile!”) that my internal girl-nesses are not functional for the baby-making.

I wrote about it here and here (and lots of other places, but I’ll spare you a day’s worth of angst reading.)

(And any more parenthetical remarks, for that matter. For now.)

It’s funny — since I got this difficult news, it seems like pregnancy and baby-lusting and maternity whatnots and celebrity child coverage have become (even more of) an obsession in my part of the world.

Everyone is having kids, planning to have kids, worrying about how to raise their kids, freaking out about star “baby bumps” or getting the latest photo of Brangelina or Bennifer offspring — or, if they don’t have a pregnancy happening in the immediate future, fussing that they won’t be able to have kids at all, or that they’ll have to wait until childbearing becomes a high-risk proposition.

Add to that the explosion in trendy fashions for moms, a thousand chic new entries into the diaper bag market (hint: if it looks like a diaper bag, you’ve probably bought the wrong one), and concert t-shirts for the 6-12 month set.

Add to that the thousands of blogs written by moms and dads that are chronicling the first years of parenthood in extreme detail. Or the blogs that cover the torturous experiences of those families trying to have their first (or second, or third, or fourth) child who struggle with an inability to conceive, or to carry a child to full term.

Add to that all the websites that have sprung up offering parenting advice and parenting news, along with a healthy dose of targeted advertising and merchandising.

Add to that all the new terms that this generation and the one before have coined to add a little “quirk” or “cool” to their child-raising experiences, like “yummy mummy” or “hipster parents.”

Add to that the fact that my friends have been having little ones for more than a decade, and that I’ve been to more showers and hospital waiting rooms and delivery suites and christenings and dedications and first birthday parties than almost anyone I know. I am the Universal Auntie Meg.

When you put it all together, it’s a pretty sure recipe for insanity at times… or, at the very least, a little self-loathing. Whether or not that’s a reasonable response.

Sure, I don’t have a husband or a nest egg yet — and I know that both of those things will need to be a part of my baby plans, given the expense of adoption and my lack of desire to do it all alone (though that’s not a given, either.)

And of course, I know that everything will work itself out in time. It generally does. Besides — when it doesn’t, you find a new way to deal.

But man… this has been a tough year.

Sometimes I feel great about the entire thing, knowing that I will get the opportunity to help out a birth mother who needs a different life for her child than the one she can give. I’ve never lacked confidence in my ability to love any baby in my arms, whether I had to do 24 hours of labour or 24 hours of paperwork to put them there.

Sometimes, though, it puts an ache in the pit of my stomach or the centre of my heart that will not go away. I wait for it to pass, and that’s all I can do.

I think it’s changed me a little — toughened me up, made me a bit more resilient, given me a bit more perspective. On the other hand, it’s also softened me in ways I wouldn’t have foreseen, and made me a more thankful soul.

I know that when I finally DO have a little one of my own, I’ll be grateful and blessed beyond imagination. I always would have been, but now I know what it’s like not to take that for granted.

Still, people ask me all the time how I handle the whole thing… what my coping mechanisms are, what my advice for fellow “infertiles” (and I hate that term, for the record) might be, what drives me nuts about our baby-obsessed culture.

That’s why I’ve put together a quick list (because OF COURSE I’d make a list) of how to survive the ups and downs of an infertility diagnosis without going absolutely bajiggity. Bear in mind, I’m just a year into the whole thing, and I haven’t even started to work through it with a mate and face the bureaucratic snarl of adoption, as I said.

BUT.

1. Expect that some people won’t know what to say to you about the whole thing. They’re not trying to ignore you or disregard your experiences. They just have no idea what you need from them, or what you might be going through. Don’t write them off if they don’t step up to the plate with a heaping dose of comfort.

Be real about where you’re at, and share as much of your life as is appropriate, given your level of intimacy. Just as you probably don’t need to share your FSH levels with the guy in the next cubicle, you should feel comfortable telling your best friend you are upset about your ovaries leaving you high and dry, even if the only thing they can think of to do is hug you or buy you a coffee.

2. Expect that some people will say WAY TOO MUCH to you about the whole thing. Many people have some friend/relative/coworker who struggled with infertility, and will feel compelled to offer you all the gory details of what they went though, and their treatments, and what you should do that Cousin Michelle did with the naturopath because it worked out really well AND it cleared up her skin!

3. Expect that all the baby stuff going on around you will upset you now and then. Not because you are a jealous, evil, withered harpy, but because it’s hard to watch other people go through a really amazing experience that you might have to experience in a different or delayed way.

Not that it won’t be great when it happens — people will tell you this constantly, by the way, and they mean well — but it hasn’t happened yet. Let yourself feel that. Cry if you need to. Rant if you need to (though not at someone’s baby shower, ok?)

4. Expect that your friends who are pregnant and having babies will feel really weird about sharing their joys with you now and then. They don’t want to feel like they’re gloating. So ask them questions. Your circumstances should never cancel out their own.

And the same goes with new moms needing to complain to you when they feel like their pelvis is going to split in two, or that they might give away their sleepless newborn. They might hesitate, not wanting to look like some sort of ingrate. Do the same thing as when life is going swimmingly in babyland — ask them questions. Keep the communication flowing.

Don’t become the person people need to tiptoe around. That just makes for sore feet — and a pain in the ass.

5. Expect that your family will struggle with the whole thing. It’s especially an adjustment for your parents to make, if they tend to be pretty involved in your life in the first place. They won’t get all the “belly photos” and ultrasound photos and hospital photos and the horrible stories of long labours and frenetic trips to the hospital to tell their friends. And more importantly, they love you. They hate watching you go through something difficult. They might not even handle it well or say all the right things.

That’s when you remind yourself that they love you, and get over it. And tell them you love them — and that they need to get over it.

6. Expect that you will feel a bit weird about the whole thing with men, if you get your news when you’re a single girl. Do you tell them right away? How long do you wait? Do you wait until they mention their family plans, or what? How long can you wait to say something until you’re just being a bit false?

Well, of course, it ain’t first date material. But it’s not something you wait to say until you’re engaged, either. The secret is to make it as little of a bomb as possible, without being untrue to yourself. If they don’t react how you expected them to react, resist the urge to clam up or freak out or break things off immediately (unless the response was really offensive, in which case, don’t waste your sexy years on some moron, thank you very much.)

In a case like mine, kids are a very important part of my life anyway, so I doubt I’d be dating a guy who didn’t feel somewhat the same way about munchkins. I might be inclined to say something sooner than later if things were getting serious. But likely not after the first kiss.

7. Expect to have days where you want to do tons of research on your health and on adoption, and days where you just don’t even want to THINK about it. Both are completely okay. Go with it — and don’t freak out at anyone if they approach you with an article on a day when you do. not. feel. like. reading. about. this.

8. Expect that other people will have very complicated feelings about all your options for having a baby, either because of their own experiences, or because they have particular ideas about what is best for you. Be willing to listen to what they have to say, but know that what you want and how you feel is what matters in the end. For example, if adoption freaks you out, it freaks you out. This doesn’t mean that you are maligning adoptive parents or adopted kids or birth mothers or anyone else.

Adoption hadn’t even really occurred to me before I got my diagnosis. That’s just the truth of the matter. This doesn’t make me a bad person who wouldn’t love my own adopted child. It just means I hadn’t thought about it yet.

Well, that’s my two cents. Or eight cents.

In all honesty, I’m still hoping to do all the right things with my health and find out from my doctor that something miraculous is possible.

But this is the life I have now, and this is the wisdom I have now.

As my Nonna told me once, “If you learn something good, you might as well share it, just in case someone else needs to learn it, too.”