Waiting

Life is full of waiting isn't it? 


From almost the moment we wake up in the morning, we're waiting for something.  Whether it's waiting in line to buy a ticket on the train/bus/ferry, or waiting for that train/bus/ferry to arrive.  Maybe it's waiting in the traffic jam, waiting for our favourite TV show to come on or waiting for dinner to cook.  Our days are filled with waiting.


We wait until we're old enough to go to school, then we're waiting until we can leave school, waiting until we can get a job, waiting until we meet the right person, waiting for them to call, waiting for the next date, waiting to start that new job, waiting for the next best thing...


We're waiting for the next weekend, the next public holiday, the next weekend or holiday away.  We're waiting for our birthdays, for Christmas.


Right now, I'm waiting for my Sydney Boy to come home.


Waiting.


I have spent the last 2 and a half (almost 3) years waiting for the opportunity to try to conceive another baby. To get through that time waiting, I convinced myself that the waiting was a great opportunity for me to have lots of fun without the tie down of kids (and I did).  I convinced myself that the waiting meant that 'in a perfect world', the waiting was just being 'banked' so that when the time came, it'd happen easily and quickly.  I mean, after all, I'd done my time waiting right?!


So now I'm stuck in a conundrum.  Technically, it's only 4 months, next to nothing, but yet because of the previous waiting, it feels like so much more.  The closer I am to the end goal, the further away I feel that I am.


In all of this time, while I have been waiting, I have been watching others get pregnant and experience all those things that I almost had, all those things that I want so badly, and hope to one day get to myself.  


While I have been waiting, I feel like I am being left behind.  I can't help but be hurt by those who came to me during a time of their need, their own loss, and I listened to their concerns and their grief and helped them through it where I could, but when their life moved on and they got pregnant again and it's like they have become the very essence of the people they once were so hurt by themselves.  


I can't help but feel as though they too, the very people I thought understood how it felt, have left me behind too.  And it really hurts.


I am reminded of that old saying "when you think the world turned it's back on you, take a closer look, maybe it was you who turned your back on the world" or something like that...  


In some cases, that does apply.  I have become someone that sometimes I don't even recognise - I feel so much bitterness when the topic of babies surfaces.  I feel ripped off that I won't ever get that innocent first pregnancy.  I feel ripped off that people who are, in my eyes, undeserving can get pregnant so easily when it's not as easy for me (and in some people's cases, down right difficult).  It's because of this, that I have distanced myself from certain people, just to spare me, and them a little bit of bitterness.


And maybe, to a degree, part of it is that I want to be the one who is doing the leaving behind.  No, that's not it.  I want to be the one who has the *choice* to do the leaving behind.  


I really am just tired of the waiting.  And yet that's all I can do:


Just wait.