Left Out, Left Behind

"They're leaving you behind."

Those were the words my mother said to me when I told her one of best friends was pregnant a little over a year ago. I had also told her that this friends two best friends were also pregnant and due a week before and a week after my friend. My mother did not know that we had also just started trying.

I, of course, rolled my eyes at my mother and brushed off her comments. I didn't think they would be leaving me behind because I would be pregnant soon, so I'd only be a few months behind them. Oh, the best laid plans.

Now, those words seem truly prophetic. I feel left behind.

Nobody makes me feel that way, at least not intentionally. But each passing day it gets harder and harder to be around moms--new, old, expectant. They are all getting to places or have been to places that I haven't and that just seem so out of reach.

I've been writing variations of this post in my head for a few days. Twice in the last week I have been in situations that have left me sad. And I hate that I have felt this way. It makes me feel like crap that I can't just be around my friends, with or without their babies, and not feel this way.

But I do. It is so hard to sit and listen to moms discuss their children, discuss being a mom, discuss being pregnant and I have nothing to contribute. And it's not like they expect me to or necessarily think anything about the fact that I can't/don't contibute. But, I hate it.

I hate hearing "now that I'm a mom" or "being a mommy this or that." I hate pregnancy stories or, well, any of it. And I hate that I hate it.

I feel so inadequate. I feel like I don't belong. But I also feel like I need to just get over it. I can't take myself out of the situations. For one thing, I want to hear my friends talk about these things because they are my friends and I love them and I want to hear about their lives and see their babies. And I want to talk about it with them in the hopes that they'll still want to talk about it with me when and if it is ever my turn.

And then I'm afraid they won't want to talk to me. I'm afraid that by that time it is my turn, they'll all be so far removed from where I am that all I will hear is the "oh, yeah, I remember that" with their shared nods and looks or that they'll just be so far removed and into different places that they won't want to hear me.

It's getting harder. Maybe it is just the time of year and that so much of the holidays is kid and family focused. But, I just really feel very sad these days and my dream feels further and further away each day. And I feel further and further removed all the time from the people I'm close to all because of this journey and the constant "failures."