July 11, 2009

Today at my meeting we’ll celebrate a member’s anniversary but also have a goodbye party.  He’s moving far away and that’s sad.  He’ll be missed in the group.

Today I picked Nicholas up  from school, drove him to the phone store, paid $50 to have his damaged phone replaced, change my name on the account, and drove him back to school, then went home.

I’m “facebook” friends with four people I went to school with.  One of them is actually my friend – we’ve never lost touch over the (29) years since school.  The others reconnected with me on facebook only.  One of them, let’s call her Adriana, is facebook friends with two other people from school, let’s call them Roza and Cassie.  So Adriana is my facebook friend, and Roza and Cassie are her facebook friends, but not mine.  We all went to school together from kindergarten through 12th grade.

Adriana, Roza and I all live several hundred miles from our home town, though all in different directions.  Cassie moved back to our town years ago.  I remember when she was looking for a house there, because another friend of mine was selling her house, and Cassie came to look at it.  My friend was having to move because the area was too expensive.  That had happened to me also.  We both started off with our children at our same schools, same beaches and playgrounds and doctors and such, and we both had to leave.  We were jealous of Cassie, just moving there, affording it how we do not know.

Now Cassie commented on facebook that she was walking through out hometown, and Adriana told her she spends too much time there.  Cassie said she knows she does, but with kids spread between (hometown) pool, high school tennis courts, and (hometown) school camp, she couldn’t go anywhere else.  She’s always driving them around.

Now Cassie is my age and my kids are 23 and 21.  I had them younger than she did so of course hers are younger.  I don’t know how many she has or what they are like or where she lives or who she’s married to.  But when I read her comment I felt that jealousy that she has the life I wanted.  Hometown, lots of kids, staying home with them.

I feel the jealousy again, even as I write this.

Let me count the ways I know this to be false.  I’m sure if I knew the details of Cassie’s life, I would not want to to trade it for mine – kids, money and town included.  I do not want to be with a man who could help me do that.  Had I been successful in staying there, I would not be driving Nicholas to get a new phone and back to school.  He’s very bright, and there wasn’t a university of his caliber in driving distance.  Nothing much was in driving distance, mainly because we lived near a very big city.  Getting anywhere was a trip, and not a short trip.  I don’t know if Erika would have stayed nearby, but she has for now, here.  I doubt she could have afforded to live on her own where we were from.

Of course I can easily count the ways my life is good and probably better than it would have been had I gotten what I’d wanted.  More than that, I can see that I really didn’t try very hard for the life I wanted, it wasn’t really as important to me as other things.

I know that negative emotions like jealousy are poison.  I do try to change that feeling quickly when I feel it.  And I don’t feel it often.  I guess my heart will always recognize some things like that dream I had of staying in my hometown, and when I see someone doing just that, I’m bound to feel a pang.  I’m glad though that I’ve learned to move on in my thoughts and emotions.  Really glad.

And I’ll try to remember that people leaving, like tonight, enables others to come.  But I won’t like it, not tonight.