Green is Not My Color

When we first started officially trying, and all of a sudden 11 people around me were pregnant and we weren't, I can honestly say I wasn't jealous. Sure my competitive spirit was irked that people who were "supposed" to get pregnant after us had suddenly "jumped in line," but I didn't begrudge them their blessing. It was never about not being happy for them. It was about simply wanting the same thing for us. And when, for the last couple of months, we've been out in public and surrounded everywhere we go by smiling pregnant women and blissfully tired families with tiny little red scrunchy newborns or adorably fat babies, so many in fact that it's prompted TH to speculate that there surely must be a second baby boom taking place, still...not jealous. I was happy for all those women and the secret joy they must feel at the sight of their swollen stomachs and the sound of their child's cry.

But then, as I wallowed through the cramps of cycle #3, which seemed like adding insult to injury (I have to hurt because of a period I didn't even want???), and we were out with our softball team for dinner after losing our second game in a row (damn I hate losing), and our right fielder is starting to show, and is into her 14th week so she's talking openly about it now, rubbing her belly and making little jokes about her baby, the one she has growing healthily inside her, and laughing about how she told the foreman of the huge new house they are custom building how she's going to be the bitchy pregnant woman giving him hell, and her husband looked like a 15-year-old waiting in line for roller coaster, all smiles and barely contained excitement about what's in store for him...something happened. Something new. I suddenly realized I wasn't happy for them. I didn't want to hear her talk about it anymore. I didn't want to look at her growing bump. I didn't want to hear her joke about feeling "fat" (haha, my legs must be pregnant too, haha -blegh). I didn't want to see their smiles.

I was officially jealous.

As a newbie to this jealousy thing, I have to say it's not a good feeling. We've been friends with this couple for a few years now, years of softball games and Christmas parties and camping. They're nice people. They both work hard. They have cute dogs. They're not assholes or liars or snobs or any other type of people I wouldn't be happy for if something good happened to them. But suddenly, seeing the world through my new green-colored glasses, I started thinking about things another way. I thought about how they've never had to struggle for anything. He's an ex-Olympian who was on While You Were Out. Last year they won the Texadelphia superbowl drawing and got a new 5,000-inch flat screen and a year's supply of pepsi products. She's an ex-collegiate soccer player who doesn't really have to work out at all and she still stays tiny because she's just that girl. They went off birth control one day and got pregnant the next. They've never had to face cancer, or debt, or even the brutal reality of a negative pregnancy test. Suddenly, the world seemed a lot more unfair.

I was a bit amused by my reaction, the way one might be amused by a child stamping his or her foot in response to not getting to eat ice cream for dinner. Amused because those reactions are like passing summer storms in Texas--honest and loud and enthusiastic, but ultimately short lived. But the next day, as I was driving down Mopac, I passed a couple in an SUV. The woman, driving, was mildly pregnant (that cute stage where you say "aw" and want to rub their belly, as opposed to the "super pregnant" stage where you just stare wide-eyed and wonder how the laws of physics continue to allow them to stand upright) and showing her husband a little green-striped, collared onsie, the kind of thing you might see on the baby of a golf-pro. And I suddenly realized that I wasn't happy for them, either. I didn't even know these people or what their circumstances were, and I was immediately, bitterly focusing on why people who are stupid enough to drive on the highway and show off baby clothes at the same time were able to procreate at all, didn't Darwin's law have any real-life applications?

I spent the rest of the day pissed, and after an evening of snapping at TH, eating dinner in mostly silence, watching Serenity while being pissed I was wasting two hours of my life watching Serenity, and taking a hot bath that I didn't even enjoy, I came to the conclusion that while every argument could be made for being jealous of friends and strangers who are having babies, and while it's certainly the easy way to be, I simply don't want to live my life feeling so shitty all the time. Shakespeare warned us to beware the green-eyed monster, and now I know why. It robs you of your peace, of your happiness with your own life and your happiness for others. I lost a good 36 hours of happiness since dinner Wednesday night that I'll never get back, and that sucks.

I don't know what exactly set me off--what it was that flipped my switch from longing for my own to jealousy of others', and I'm not even sure it matters if I ever figure it out. If I have to meditate every day, if I have to read quotes about positive thinking every hour on the hour, if I have to take a complete hiatus from all things baby-related until I can get myself back into my happy, serene, not-jealous world, I'll do it.

Because I have to remember there's more to life than babies, and I'm missing out on it if the only thing I can see is green.