What is it with goats around here?

For some reason, when I decided to write about being mad, this is the first thing that came to my mind: Mad Sesame Street goat.

I can't help it, I get mad at pregnant women. And women with small babies. And women who are  gonna just pop that next one out, whenever they decide. Not all of them, mind you, and not all the time.

I can still be happy for a friend who is pregnant or has a new baby. I can even handle the gonna-poppers okay.

But not all the time. Not when I'm in my own little world, trying to think of other things in my day, and I get caught unawares. When I'm happily spinning some tale of meaningfulness of something I'm about to do, workwise, or otherwise, and I turn a corner and there they (or she) is. Whoever she is. Pregnant women I don't know, I stay away from. Pregnant women I do know, depends how much we have in common. I can have entire coffee or lunch dates in which my throat doesn't catch, and where I even hold a newborn. And it is nice. And I'm not spiraling down some dark slide.

Other times, I can't. I think it is mostly the caught-unawares times that get me verklempt. For a while I've been trying to stop feeling mad or sad (I'm guessing the mad is just a less powerless feeling to substitute for sad), trying to understand why I react that way. I try to feel more grateful for the one kid I do have. For the fact that I am amazingly privileged compared to so many women around the world.

But not only is that goat singing about being mad, he's saying me that it is okay to be maaaad. Today, I'm going to agree. It's okay. It is okay to just go away. It is okay not to stick around. It is okay for others to be happy and me to not be sometimes. It is okay to be mad (although not okay to throw a grown-up tantrum where cups and mean words go flying...I've never done this, I'm just checking in that this would, indeed, be in bad form).

You tell it, goat. Tell it.

There is another part of this, though, that is also hard to navigate. That when I actually tell people that I'm having a hard time getting pregnant, they often switch into fixing mode and start firing off questions about what I'm doing to change my situation. I know I do it to others, too. That doesn't help. Especially not from someone who has not been through this. I have not spoken up in order to ask for help fixing my problem - I have a husband and some doctors working hard with me on that front. We're set with the working on the fixing. I have spoken up because I'm not going to be able to smile the "yeah, I know, right?" smile along with the group on this one. It is okay just to say "Oh, I'm sorry" to me and we go on to some other topic of conversation. I don't do it because I want to make someone feel bad, but I also can't just sit with a half-smile and not nod. That shit just gets awkward after a while, and soon people think you're mad at them for something they did.

And technically I am, but it isn't something they did to me.

And there have been many times I've stuck my foot in my mouth in a similar situation, and just wish I'd known earlier that I was talking down a road the other person really didn't want to travel. And the further down that road I talked in the end, the worse I felt. Because there are so many other things to talk about on any given day.

I'm not really mad anymore. I'm not sad right now. I'm also not easily incorporable into some groups. And that's okay.