Jan 19, 2008 13:32
let me start by saying this. i am an incredibly lucky woman. and i know that better than anyone else. i've got a great partner, a beautiful little boy, friends who i don't really deserve and at the end of the day, i fall asleep with the comfort in knowing it will all be there tomorrow when i wake up.
i know all that and still there are days i sit down and think to myself. where did it all go? is this really what my life was supposed to be? am i the only one who feels like all these years were supposed to add up to more? or maybe not more, but a different fairytale? wasn't i supposed to do more, love more, see more before i settled in to live the good life?
last night i went out with the girls, and we went to a bar a lot like the bars i frequented in college and i saw people having fun and drinking like there was no tomorrow and laughing and taking pictures and i though, man it must be good to be so young. the truth is, most of those people are older than me. farther along in age with less responsibility. no careers, just jobs. no partners, just flings, no baby food to buy, just booze. and in those moments, i am completely envious. despite what i have waiting for me when i go home. and that in itself makes me a terrible person.
i look at guys i've known for years, some who are my very closest friends and i think - what happened to the days i thought, well... maybe in the end we'll just end up together... and i can just get lost in conversations all night with my best friend. or guys who i said i'd definitely give a shot one day, when the timing was all right. you don't get those shots back. you don't get to take another shot at life when you're this far into the game.
sure you can be in love with the person you wake up to every morning, i know because i am. i really wouldn't want to spend the rest of my life with anyone else... i have a man who's never told me no. he's never been demanding or overbearing or untrustworthy .... he's been nothing short of incredible; so i do know that you can be in love with your partner and still have the feelings of inadequacy... the feelings of being trapped and stopped short in life.
this does not make me a terrible mother, i am a fantastic mother.... i suppose i'm just starting to know what my mom meant when she looked at me and said she wanted more out of my life than she got out of hers.... however great it may have been to have me in her life.... there were so many things i was going to do before i had 6 bottles sitting in the sink to clean, a jar of formula to replace and 3 baskets of some one else's laundry to do. i had a life planned for myself. and this wasn't it.
so sure, i'm happy. i am the luckiest girl in the world. but at the end of the day... is all of that really enough? it doesn't matter much anymore, those dreams and plans have long since passed me by, or at least been revised. i am a mother, and a wife to be, and a teacher. i come home to dirty dishes that have to be cleaned and a baby who's crying because he's got an ear ache. i am a wife-to-be who lives with dirty underwear and wet towels on the floor and full, flat coke cans sitting on the carpet in reach of my 6 month old who tips it over. i am living with someone who doesn't know my worht, and if he does he doesn't express it and maybe that's why i've quit noticing his. and when it's all said and done, this is my life. and there are people who sit around wanting to be me, or live my life and that's a great feeling but, i was supposed to be someone else. i was supposed to be somewhere else meeting new people and loving more, and learning less. this isn't who i was supposed to be and yet i am.
and i guess it just feels like sometimes, everyone else because who they wanted to be and emily just got caught up in becoming who she was supposed to be and how fun is that?