Missing them....

My life is very different now.

This time two years ago I would have been enjoying the 75 degree/blue sky day on the dropzone, hurling myself out of a plane - enjoying every blissful second of freefall.

Two years ago I was skinny, buying shorts in size 5!

This time two years ago I was happy and had lots of friends through skydiving and life was good.

Arianna seems to be going through some kind of temper tantrum stage and basicly whines all the time. Its very trying. Last night she woke up at 1 AM and I went in to her room to either give her a bottle or 'something' to calm her down. Nothing I could do would console her. Eventually I rocked her to sleep, but the moment I laid her down in the crib again she started screaming like a banshee and couldn't be consoled. I ran out of her room, woke Shawn up and said "I think I'm going to hurt her if I have to put up with this anymore, please deal with this tantrum". He did, and she went to sleep again in about 10 min. It was like slapping me across the face. What did I do wrong that would console her or get her to sleep?

This year has been incredibly hard for me. Arianna's prematurity has been very hard on both Shawn and I. Her hospital admissions were hardest on me as I stayed with her almost 24/7.

This winter has been hard with having to pull Arianna out of daycare. My supervisor is getting annoyed with all the time off I've had to take, but Ari keeps getting sick. I hate that there is a conflict between my family life and my career.

In the beginning it was just Shawn and me dealing with Arianna. My family and I were 'on the outs' again and my father didn't see Arianna until she was almost 6 months old. We had to deal with NICU, and then the PICU by ourselves. I went through the motions not realizing how stressful it really was until months later. I would have really liked a friend to talk to or a friend to simply call and ask how I was doing - no one called, ever.

I even remember one day while I was waiting in the NICU waiting room for shift change to end, my mother had the nerve to call me to vent about how a friend of hers didn't pay for her soda at lunch that day and how it was making her depressed. I have an infant in the NICU and haven't heard from more than one friend in weeks - wanna talk about depressed some other time, Mom?

Today, I don't even talk to my skydiving friends anymore. I had started a non-profit organization called Gaia's Rose two years ago, with my skydiving friend Mary from Colorado. We would raise money for breast cancer research. One thing we did was create a calendar, loosely based on the Calendar Girls movie, that would feature women skydivers who participate in the Jump for the Cause event. The calendar was a big success and I met so many wonderful, inspiration women. I went to lots of events all over the country and the atmostpher was intoxicating - I loved it! Mary and I talked almost every day while the calendar was in production. I really felt I had a 'forever friend' in her.

I haven't heard from Mary in almost 6 months. The 6 months prior to that the only time I'd hear from her is if I called her. She hasn't made any effort to contact me.

My friend Karen is in law school, yet she still manages to send frequent emails and when she does venture home from Philadelphia she makes a point of coming over to see Arianna and we talk. She is one of my only friends who has seen my new house - and we've lived her for 7 months. She's getting married in January, to someone we went to highschool with (yet didn't 'meet' until she was in Philadelphia), and I'm very afraid that we're going to drift apart.

My friend Kathy just had a baby boy - he's beautiful and Kathy and Shawn (her husband) are going to be great parents. I've known Kathy for almost 20 years - she is my best friend. She called me the day Nathan was born and I was visiting her (2+ hours away) 3 days later - enjoying the 'newness' of motherhood. The day Arianna was born I called her also. She wasn't home as it was the middle of the day so I left a message, it was very anticlimactic for me.

I've known my friends Brenda and Joanne for 4 years. We worked together at Rhode Island Hospital. We made plans for a 'girls night out' in December. Due to lots of stuff happening its been reschedule and rescheduled. Hopefully May 5th we'll finally be able to go out. What originally started as me wanting to have friends over to see my daughter (whom they've only met once, last summer) and my new house, has now warped into meeting for a few moments at some flea market in Wellesley, MA (over an hour away).

My friend Megan I've also known for 20 years. She's busy with a new job and her cute kids. I haven't seen her in weeks and we barely talk. Some day I hope our kids can play together. I hope some day we can actually see each other. I don't know what my excuse is - we only live 5 miles apart.

I miss my friends. I miss having a life outside of my daughter. Don't get me wrong, I love my daughter to pieces. She is the light of my life and I enjoy 99.9% of the time I spend with her - no matter what we do. But its hard. Being a parent is stressful, let alone a parent of a preemie with all sorts of therapy appointments and illness.

I want a break from all that stuff and just have coffee with my friends - forget about the stress of work/family and just talk like we used to.

I send cards to my friends but I never even hear if they get them. I hope they do, I spend alot of time making them. I don't have any more to send - all of my scrapbooking supplies/card supplies have been destroyed in our flooded basement. I don't even have my creative outlet anymore.

I miss the old me - the one who was skinny. The one who could actually keep friends and be chatty. Now I just feel like a fat lump who has spit up on her t-shirts so she can't go out in public anymore.

It makes me wonder what I did.

Lots of people say that any relationship is give and take. I've done alot to try and salvage all the relationships in my life and I don't feel I get much reciprocal from the other half- so therefore the relationships aren't salvageable, they're not really my 'friends'.

Where did I go wrong? What did I do to them that made them not want to put the same effort into our relationship? Just like Arianna's temper tantrum last night - Shawn could get her to sleep, but I couldn't? What was wrong with me?

I miss my friends, I miss the old me, I miss... being happy.