A woman provoked the cold shoulder from one of her closest friends after she gave some tough love and criticized a two-year long grieving process that, she thinks, has become obsessive.
Miscarriages are brutal. Nobody says they're not. But what if the glimmer in your eye, because it never sees the light of day, makes you blind?
The doghouse-bound friend recounted all the working parts of the feud in a lengthy, thoughtful post on subReddit "Am I The A$$hole" (AITA).
burneraccount234786 closes the post honestly wondering if she's screwed up here, despite feeling in the right. As always, for purposes of moral absolution, judgment, and escalation, the internet doesn't disappoint.
After kicking off the account by informing that her friend's inciting miscarriage occurred two years ago, burneraccount234786 explains that in the beginning she had full patience for whichever direction her friend's grieving took.
"A good friend of mine miscarried her daughter at around 18 weeks. It was a terrible time for her, and it broke her a bit."
"She chose to deal with it by starting an Instagram where she documents her loss, and for a while that helped."
It was during that initial mourning phase that the first red flag arrived. But, again, our narrator was supportive no matter what.
"She started to referred to her as having been "born sleeping", which is baffling to me (I believe that you shouldn't sugar coat grief/death) but I figured that whatever gets her through the next year was fine, and I did my best to be supportive.
Two years later, still witnessing the same behavior of the "initial phase," burneraccount234786 has lost patience.
"Since then, it's become her identity. She always talks about it, her 'journey,' and her 'angel baby in heaven.' Hardly anything else!"
"She even threw a birthday party twice for her daughter. With a cake and candles!!! The first one I understood, but with the second one....felt ghoulish."
For the record: this may be the most conscientious case of someone calling another person a ghoul.
The narrator then only adds to her own credibility.
"I've experienced miscarriages (one at 14 weeks, another fairly early on) myself, and while it sucked, it was no great cataclysm, and I got over it rather quickly."
"I understand not everyone is like this but I think that something is very wrong."
Then she comes in with a bombshell. The key info vaults the story from a ghoul in a vacuum to a serious, weird problem.
"I would totally just let it go as harmless eccentricity except for the fact that she has a five year old son."
"He appears on her social media, but never as like 'just her son,' it's always as 'her brother' being graveside, holding the body in the hospital, posed next to a bigger picture of her face, etc."
"He's become more of a prop than a person, less of a priority to her than her grief."
When the neglected kid finally makes a coded cry for help, burneraccount234786 refuses to take her friend's side.
"Last week, she called me in tears because the son had destroyed some of the framed photos of his sister, and she had found him 'destroying the nursery.' She said that she punished him, and told me she had no idea why he would disrespect his sister like that."
"I told her that 'you would probably lose it too if you felt like you were competing with a ghost,' and that her obsession with her daughter is delusional, unhealthy and endangering her relationship with her VERY alive son."
After the narrator laid down the brutal honesty, her friend hung up and has since refused to return her calls.
Clearly at the end of her rope, the tough lover asked Reddit for piece of mind.
Many Redditors gave simple and direct support to burneraccount234786.
"That's basic child neglect, not fair on the poor kid at all! Good job for seeing his side!" Sapphireseafoam
"She needed to be confronted about this at some point. Maybe now that she was she can see her behavior for what it is, unhealthy." lolabornack
"You're not wrong for saying what you did, but I just don't think your friend is capable of hearing you right now."
"This kind of obsessive grieving isn't the norm more than two years in, and your friend needs help." melimineau
Even more took it a step further, pointing out that her friend is not just in the wrong, but needs some real help.
"I was sympathetic to the friend until you mentioned the Instagram."
"I might be misinterpreting this but it reads like she's addicted to the attention she gets being a mother of a miscarried child." Readingreddit12345
"At this point, I would make a call to child services and have them intervene."
"There is only so much you and her husband can do, but they have the legal ability to step in and get that child and his mother the help they need." Thatvideogamenerd
"She needs to see a therapist and talk about this happening. There is a way to process grief and this isn't it." wheady-mile
Others didn't chose not to give advice. They were reduced to pure sympathy for the neglected kid.
"Her poor son has spent 2 of his 5 years in the shadow of her grief. That poor child." LefthandedLemur
As with the internet, there's no knowing how this story ends, only it's most dramatic dynamics in the middle of the ordeal.
