Toxic Friends

I've just been reading an article in a magazine about how to rid yourself of toxic friends and make a new start next year. If only it was that simple. I can easily identify my 'toxic friend'. After my double ectopic pregnancy she sent me an email saying 'Well, you've had an eventful week. You don't do things by halves do you?' and then continued to tell me all about her and her week where she was singing in a local choir concert which I would have loved had I bothered to buy tickets. The fact that I was in hospital after an emergency operation seemed to have slipped her mind at this point. This is probably the hardest thing in my life that I have ever been through and to have people making me feel like a drama queen is not what I need at all. This friend is so self-centred I don't even think she was being deliberately cruel, just what is going on in her life is so much more important than what is happening in mine.

But how do you rid yourself of these friends? She's getting married next year and Mr W is an usher, we have a lot of mutual friends too which means I can hardly cut her out of my life. I just don't want her to contact me anymore. I don't want her toxic remarks that just make me feel even worse at a time when I already feel I am just barely stopping myself from breaking into a hundred thousand pieces. I am fragile and I need cotton wool to surround me not razor sharp needles. My close friend tells me I have to let it go. I have to stop caring about her and what she thinks. I know I still have to see her in group situations, but I don't want her to call or email or offer her 'support'. She even told a mutual friend of ours that my operation wasn't that bad because the worst part about a laparoscopy was the gas they pump into you (may I add that this toxic friend is a doctor). Firstly, this wasn't just an operation. I lost two babies. She's a woman and a woman that wants children as she has vocally expressed in the past. So how can she not understand that I wouldn't give a sh*t about gas?! The worst part about my operation was the emptiness that I still have in my heart. The hole in my life that my two babies, although only days old, have left. Even without that aching, burning grief that shows no signs of healing along with my poor body, my operation was actually a laparotomy. So I was cut from one side of my groin to the other. Two weeks later and I have only just stopped bleeding. I only have one Fallopian tube left which is badly scarred and a 20% chance of another ectopic pregnancy, which makes both Mr W and I petrified to try again. As a doctor, I expected understanding; as a friend, empathy. I got neither. And can a friendship ever recover from such a betrayal? Her fiance called Mr W to offer his condolences. He shared with him hope for the future from a medical perspective (he's also a doctor) and Mr W actually felt much better after speaking to him. But my friend is apparently 'waiting for my call' which she will be waiting for a long, long time yet.