A Breakthrough?

I smiled at a kid this morning. Granted it was at Starbucks and that always makes me happy, but I smiled at him all by myself. Now this past year...let me be honest...I glare at pregnant women and I sneer at children. I've become that fashionably dressed woman in her fitted clothes and high heels who obviously does not have children and by the looks of her doesn't want them, the one who acts annoyed by the screaming or running kid....but that's all it is...an act.

I want so badly to pat them on the head, to smile knowingly to the pregnant woman, to laugh as the kid tells me an unintelligible story...but to open myself up to that opens me up to the pain of thinking that may never be me...

For whatever reason, this jealousy only applies to strangers...I'm finally able to rejoice when a friend is pregnant (although there is that initial pang of jealousy and a knot in my stomach when I see them start to show)...but thankfully, all of that goes out the window when the baby is here. Maybe it's because only she can enjoy the pregnancy, but I can enjoy the baby. There have however been 2 friends who's actual pregnancy did not bother me at all even from the initial announcement. One who's had 2 kids (which feel more like my niece and nephew!) and one who is halfway through her pregnancy right now (but who struggled through this with me....she gives me hope that this will happen for both of us...because that's how the story is supposed to end...).

What was I saying again? Oh yeah, so I smiled at a kid this morning...all by myself. He was just sitting there looking cute, and he just made me smile as I walked by. He smiled back, and then I saw that the mom had noticed this little exchange and she was smiling too...and it made me feel good. Not sad, not mad, not jealous...but happy...at peace.

Also this past weekend, I found out another friend (one who we don't see much anymore) is pregnant as well...and I didn't cry. Still haven't cried...haven't felt the need...

I think in therapy terms they would call this a breakthrough...I'm not quite sure where I've broken through to...but it's nice here...a little less bitterness, a little more tolerance, a lot more happiness. Maybe I'm finally learning to let go...and let it be.

Que sera, sera....for now.