Maybe It’s Not Blue. Maybe It’s You.

It all reminds me of a sketch I love by Key & Peele (truth be told… I love most of their sketches) but one in particular brings home a point that I’ve been thinking about. I’ll try to explain first in non-specific terms as to offend as little people as possible (if that’s possible).

Let’s say you hate the color blue. I don’t know why you’d feel that way as blue is actually my favorite color but there you are. You absolutely hate the color blue, the ocean and sky make you cry and Dory as well as Cookie Monster and Grover drive you insane. You mention this quite often. You also tend to be short with people, dismissive of their feelings and perhaps insensitive at times in general. When others point this out to you, you immediately respond with, “You’re just saying that because I hate the color blue!” thereby taking no responsibility for your actions.

Now, here’s the sketch that hilariously demonstrates my point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3h6es6zh1c

Bottom line: Maybe it’s not that you hate the color blue. Maybe it’s more that you need to honestly look at your behavior.

Has anyone else observed this in the cyber-universe???

Perhaps this isn’t a new trend but lately, I feel like I personally have been seeing an increase in this kind of logic both in the infertility community and out. It’s online pretty much everywhere you look: Chat boards, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

You just don’t like that I’m a Democrat!

People treat me differently because I speak the truth!

I wasn’t rude. You just feel that way because I called you out!

It’s a hostile world out there what with an insane election, issues on gun control, LGBT rights and if you’re Team Kanye or Team Taylor Swift. I’m neither by the way.

And hey – I admit that I too can get passionate about my beliefs but to accuse a person or a community of treating you differently because you don’t like the color blue can’t be your “get out of responsibility free card”.

In the infertility community, that’s where it upsets me the most. Whether you adopted, went through IVF, are childfree, etc., aren’t we meant to support each other? You can’t be dismissive of someone’s pain, point fingers or start a flame war and then claim that you weren’t being provocative and people are just singling you out because of your fertility journey. That makes no sense.

Now to be clear: I’m not saying that you shouldn’t express how you feel if someone makes an insensitive comment or unintentionally (hoping it was unintentionally) hurts your feelings. There’s a way though to give someone the benefit of the doubt and say, “Hey, you probably didn’t mean for it to come off this way but when you said X, it came off as Y.” That, I respect. That’s not starting a fight. That’s starting healthy dialogue. And god willing, if you express that to someone, they will recognize you’re coming from a good place and meet you half way.

Look, we can’t always all get along. We can’t. I’ve been involved in the infertility community a LONG time now and I’ve seen the nicest, sweetest, most thoughtful people still manage to offend someone. I can’t think of one person (whether they know it or not) who unintentionally (there’s that word again) hasn’t upset someone. Either they posted a picture of their child (or too many pictures in someone’s opinion) or they made a joke that came off wrong or they posted good news to them but not so good news to someone else and so on and so on that bothered someone for one reason or another. It happens.

I remember years ago, someone in the IF community wrote a lovely piece featuring another member of the IF community just saying how much they respected them and others got offended that they too weren’t mentioned in the piece. You just never always know what may rub someone the wrong way on the wrong day (if that makes sense). Really – all you can do is try to be empathetic, do your best and apologize if you accidentally made a misstep that hurt others.

Lord knows I’ve hurt people along the way. If you know me or met me though, I think you would know firsthand that it’s SO not my thing to set out and do that. I would never intentionally (man, I really like that word!) mean to upset anyone. Well, ok, maybe the Duggars but that’s it. I’ve always apologized and tried to hear people out when this has happened but one thing I know I’ve never done is say, “This is just because I’m a fast talking New Yorker who can’t always keep up with her brain!” No. Sometimes, it’s just that I actually just fucked up. My bad. My fault and I need to own that.

But the whole, “It’s not me that’s done anything! People are just mean to me because blah, blah, blah.” That’s not owning anything. That’s not giving others credit for supporting your feelings, even if you do hate the color blue or are a democrat or are a fan of Kim Kardashian (for whatever god forsaken reason). If enough people say to you, “Hey, you’re kind of being a poopie pants”, I’m just asking you take a moment and ask yourself, “Hmmm. Am I being a poopie pants? If so, why?”

Again, not sure if anyone else but me is seeing this trend but that’s my two cents. Any which way, I do love the color blue but if you don’t, I absolutely respect that and love you anyway!