Jealous

Today the jealousy is the hardest part.

I'm jealous of every single pregnant woman I see. I'm jealous of my overabundance of friends who are newly pregnant, about to pop, or have recently welcomed new little babies in to their families. I'm jealous of women who are just now starting to TTC their first or second and won't have any trouble at all. I'm jealous of their blissful ignorance.

That was all supposed to be my life. At multiple different points last year, I should have been experiencing all those things instead of pining over them.

I feel left behind.

I never could have anticipated what a vastly different direction my life would go in because of all this. In May 2009, so many of my friends were at the exact same place in life. We had all given birth to our first babies just a few months before. We were chatting over baby smiles, discussions about breastfeeding and sleep schedules, and bonding over our new found mommyhood. Two years later, I couldn't have less in common with most of my friends. It's alienating and it takes more away from you than the obvious. It takes away how I relate to those I hold dearest. Those same friends have now had a second, even third, child and they don't understand me and I can't bear to look at them.

So they secretly call me jealous and think I'm too consumed by this and it goes from being pathetic to unhealthy to tolerable, and I not-so-secretly know they are mostly right.