A defining moment

One day my friend and I were talking about our lives and how we had gotten to where we were.    She made an interesting comment.  She said that she could pinpoint the defining moment where her life changed.  She chose one sport over another in high school and that was the moment where everything started to go in a certain direction.  She credits this moment with changing her life and regrets the decision she made.  She is certain that if she had chosen differently, her life would have been very different.

I brought this up to another friend and she said she could do the same thing.  It was the year that things started to get harder for her at school and she just didn’t put forth the effort that she used to.  She also regrets the decision she made and feels like if she had chosen differently back then, her life would have gone down a very different path. 

I was surprised that both of them were able to come up with this moment so quickly.  Like it was on the tip of their tongues.  They just knew this was the moment their lives changed. 

I don’t have that.

I have no defining moment.  I can’t pinpoint anything and I feel jealous of them because I feel like at least they can do something to change this in their current life.  Sure, my friend can’t go back and decide to play the other sport.  Or my other friend can’t study harder in whatever grade that was.  But they can kind of extrapolate an answer to their current issues using their feelings about the past issues.  Or maybe not.  Maybe it just tortures them knowing they made the wrong choice and now 15 years down the line have to just deal with what their choice was back then.

I don’t know when I started to feel dissatisfied with my life.  In high school, I was very dissatisfied.  I was unhappy with myself and not at all confident and so I made myself miserable.  But in college, I was much happier and felt more at easy with my life.  Until my boyfriend broke up with me.  I felt like I lost all my friends.  I used to think that he got the friends in the divorce.  But the more I think about it, the more I probably lost them because of the person I had become when I was with him.  Maybe this is my defining moment? How lame that my defining moment is my college boyfriend dumping me? That’s like the most passive defining moment ever.

After college, I moved to a brand new city where I only knew three people.  It was scary and exciting and I loved it and hated it all at the same time.  But I made friends and I met people.  I met my husband. I settled in. I never left the area.  A few of us still talk about the fun parties I used to have at my apartment.  I loved my life.  And then, somewhere along the way I got dissatisfied again. 

I realize I don’t need a defining moment to change things and to feel like I’m turning things around.  But it would give me something concrete to hold on to.  Right now, I don’t feel like I have that.  It’s so hard to motivate myself to change things.  I spend my day feeling hopeless while job hunting.  I can’t motivate myself to stop watching terrible tv shows and reading 10000 blogs and playing with the dog. 

I used to be the type of person who couldn’t sleep because I had too much energy.  I would organize my closet at 3 am because I was awake and needed something to do.  I never had issues finding things.  Everyone got birthday cards and gifts right on their birthday.  Now I feel like I have to write down load dishwasher on my to do list.  That was just something I used to do. 

I feel like I lost some of the spark that I used to have. And I don’t know how to get it back.  My husband keeps telling me that getting pregnant isn’t going to make me instantly happy.  I know that it won’t.  But at this point, it won’t make me sad so anything’s an improvement, right?

Conflicting Emotions

We were sitting in the waiting room at the RE’s office and there was a girl waiting at the check in desk for someone to stop by. (It was a weekend so the office staff wasn’t there.)  When a nurse stopped by, she asked for a doctor.  The nurse told her that the doctor on call was downstairs at the IVF center doing a transfer and she could go down and talk to him when he was done. 

When I heard that the doctor was doing a transfer, I got all happy for the person who was getting the transfer done. I thought – how exciting for them!  They must be so excited and they could potentially be pregnant this month!  So tell me why do I feel so happy for a total stranger?  But when my friends tell me they are pregnant, I have to struggle to have a happy reaction sometimes?

Maybe it’s because I know this stranger who is going through IVF is having just as hard a time of it as me whereas most of my friends get pregnant very easily?   And I don’t want to sound like I’m not happy for my friends. I am.  It’s just that I feel that pang of jealousy that makes it hard for me to be happy right away.

Sometimes I really feel like a terrible person.

Just Because

I love the Hallmark store. I am a Gold Crown member and I buy a ton of cards.  You should see my pile for Mother’s Day – I buy every freaking person I know a card!  And my favorite part of the store used to be the “just because” section where there were all those sappy “because we’re friends” cards or funny “hey remember when…” cards.  I used to love to browse through those cards and think oh my gosh, so and so would LOVE this card.

Yesterday, I was looking through these cards in the CVS while I was waiting for a prescription to be filled.  And while I loved many of the cards, I was having a hard time thinking of people to buy them for.  And I started to realize that I just don’t have as many friends as I used to. 

Where did they go?

Okay, that’s dumb. I know where they went.  They had kids.  They became doctors with insane on call schedules.  They moved away. They married guys with extensive networks of friends so that they hang out with those people more.  In some cases, they just drifted away.

But for the first time in my life, they haven’t been replaced by the new crop of friends. There was no major transition like from high school friends to college friends. Or from college friends to new work friends in whatever new city you’re living in.  Up until I was laid off, I was at the same job for a while.  I’ve been living in my house for a long time.  There’s nowhere to make these new friends. I don’t have a kid so it’s not like I can make new mommy friends. 

I knew this would happen eventually.  And it’s not like I don’t have friends.  I have a really close friend from high school that I talk to all the time and even though we live over an hour away from each other, we see each other a lot.  I have my sister-in-law who I hang out with constantly.  I have a college friend who I email all the time even though we live four hours away from each other.  I have a friend that I meet for dinner once a month and we talk about everything (but oddly enough, that’s it – once a month and never more than that.)  I have friends.  But I don’t have that “drop by for coffee” type thing that my mom had growing up.  And that it would appear that some of my friends have, especially based on Facebook status updates. 

I don’t have that whole Sex and the City group of friends that tv insists I should have.  Is that normal? I can’t tell.  I used to always have a group of friends – sure that group changed a lot over the years and people have filtered in and out.  But now, it’s like I have all these separate people I’m close to and no group.  Is that what happens in your 30s?  My mom always had a ton of family around and those were her friends – her sisters were always around.   They knew what was going on with each other.  They did coffee drop bys.  And they’d hang out together all the time.

I guess I just feel like it’s another thing that is changing as I’m growing up. I hate change.  But I didn’t even realize it was changing until  I was standing in that CVS.

Fourteen Years

I “liked” my college alma mater on Facebook and so now they pop up on my wall occasionally.  Lately, it’s been with messages for incoming freshman.  Either about Orientation, or moving in, or the first weekend’s activities.  Fourteen years ago (way before we all had a Facebook existed with these helpful messages), I was moving in.  I remember how terrified I was.  During the summer orientation, I had met some nice people and it seemed like fun, but this was going to be real life.  I was moving out.  I was irritable all morning packing up the car.  I was cranky the entire time the orientation aides were helping my family unpack and move things into my room. I was first and my mom was so excited that I got to pick the bed first and I was mean and told her it was so small that who cared.  We realized I forgot to bring laundry detergent so my dad asked the RA where the closest store was.  I refused to walk with my parents to go get it so they went out to buy it while I unpacked.  And then they were leaving and I bawled.  After being mean to them all morning, I was so sad they were leaving and I was on my own.  I was left alone to make friends (so awkwardly, God, I was so awkward) and discover parties and discover warm beer.   And it was terrifying.

But in a way, I wish I could go back to that day and start it all over again.  I would do so much differently and be more involved in things and make more friends and just experience more than dirty basements and kegs of Natty Ice.   And studied more.  But then I guess my life would probably have led me towards a completely different path.  I just wonder how different.  Could it have led me to the same places just in a happier state of mind? 

I guess I’ll never know. I can’t go back.  I’m stuck where I am and the only thing I change is the future.