05.12.06
People change, and people come and go
Seriously? Today is May 12? How can it be mid-May, I am having a baby at the end of the month! I am going to be a mom. I have been thinking about this practically non-stop for eight months, but wow, it is still a little hard to believe.
So my days have been drastic ups and downs of emotions mostly being taken out on Steve in passive aggressive ways like nagging him for leaving a towel on the floor, although yesterday was a nice break from hormonal instability and we both had fun while we got groceries, new shoes and had hot dogs for supper. As I danced around the living room showing off my new sandals last night, he smiled at me and told me how happy I made him.
I have been having trouble sleeping and have ended up staring at the ceiling from the couch the last few nights. This feeling of being constantly overheated inside does nothing to help matters, especially since it gets worse at night. I am hot and clammy at the same time, waking up every half hour to roll over because my hips and shoulders cramp from constantly lying on my side. Everyday I am thankful that my due date falls before summer hits, because I think that the heat and humidity would steal the joy of being pregnant quicker than sweat beads on my forehead. My feet have been swollen and my fingers constantly feel fat. I have gained forty pounds, and although my goal was to stay under thirty-five, I still feel ok about my weight. I feel like most of my weight is on my stomach and breasts, and only sometimes do I catch glimpses of a significantly rounder face in a mirror and wonder if I am fatter than I realize.
I have been mulling over an entry the past few days that may never articulate itself about friends and changing and growing apart. I had a long conversation over coffee with a friend yesterday about what appears to be selfishness versus inability to look outside of your own world. I told her about the handful of events and comments over the past few months that have hurt me, and the realization that despite protests and claims of missing us, another friend does not seem to be willing to make any sacrifices from her lifestyle as it is now to have a visit. In other words, she is coming to the baby shower, but only to run away early the next morning to catch a flight to a rugby tournament in Ottawa. She can afford this flight, but could not save enough to visit us through the winter. Tells us we left her and need to come visit more but waits for us to come to her, and does not seem to understand that we do not want to stay with her and her roommates with baby and dog in tow. And for the first time possibly ever, the other night I realized that this friend and I may very well eventually lose touch. And if not lose touch, than the day may come that we really have very little to talk about.
I said to my friend at the coffee shop that I did not want it to be me losing touch with my single friends, but sometimes when priorities change so much, it can be hard to find common ground. And she said to me that it was not about being single versus being committed, and it was not about children versus work, but the reality of it was that sometimes we meet people whose lives mirror ours for a moment but no matter how far away from each other we may be, there is always a common ground there. There is always some way to relate to the other, even when lives are as different as night and day. And sometimes other people who may be just as dear to us as anyone, but when life comes between, it somehow seems harder to recover from the distance.
I have always known this. Known that people drift in and out of life, and that only a precious few remain constant, it still infuses in me this feeling of (almost) mourning. For what was or what used to be or what might have been. And while I would not change my life right now for any of the could-have-beens, and while I await the birth of my child with anticipation unparallel to anything else I have ever felt, there has been a twinge of sadness in my heart at the thought of maybe losing a friend for the last few days.
I have been doing a lot of thinking these past few nights while I have been lying awake in the silence, and I promised to myself that I would never lose the list of things I love, like the smell of a thunder storm, or swimming, or biking through wooded trails, or watching clothes on a clothesline blow in the wind, or the smell of fresh cut grass, or the way that getting together with my brothers and parents never fails to make my heart sing, of my friends that I have, independent of Steve, who I have known since my childhood.
I wondered to myself, in the middle of the night last night, how it is that a bond made over dolls, bicycles and sleepovers has held stronger than so many of the bonds made beyond childhood. How it can be difficult to understand why someone holds such a strong piece of your history in their hands, but easier, maybe, to just accept their unconditional love.
And so, even through relationships and broken hearts and different jobs and provinces and failed friendships that I thought would be forever and now impending motherhood, there are still people, there is still a friend other than family and boyfriends, that remains constant.
wunderwuman at 12:13 p.m.