Where I Am

When I was an undergraduate, I spent a semester of my junior year studying abroad in Cambridge, England.  It was four of the most amazing months of my life. Upon returning home, however, I was surprised to realize that everybody else’s lives – those of my friends and my family – had moved on without me.  Rather, I was surprised that I hadn’t realized that of course their lives were going on as usual.  I was so caught up in my once-in-a-lifetime experience that I forgot that things would have changed when I got back.  There were no drastic changes, but I had somehow failed to expect to need to catch up on their lives after my four-month absence.  Selfish?  Solipsistic?  Yes.  But there it was.

In the past 6 months or so, approximately 8,604 (more or less) of my friends have either given birth or announced their pregnancy.  Okay, maybe not that many.  But a lot.  Every time I turn around it seems like another friend is giving birth of announcing that she’s expecting.

And I am thrilled for them.  Absolutely, positively thrilled.

But.

The vast majority of these friends (of all of my friends, really) still live in Kentucky.  Or, at least, they don’t live in Tallahassee. And though Dave and I still have our fingers crossed that eventually we will get to move back to our home state, it’s definitely quite a ways off (if it were to happen at all).  In the meantime, the birth announcements of these friends reminds me that their lives are moving on without me being there. And that’s as it should be.  

Having my bubble bursted – that ridiculous bubble that says that everyone’s life will wait to move forward until I am able to be a part of it again – hurts just a little bit, but it’s also a very, very good thing.  It reminds me that I have to be in the here and now.  I want to be with my friends as they go through this amazing process – both the good and the bad parts of it.  But the reality of it is that I’m hundreds of miles away.

So though I can’t be there physically, I have to remember to be better at being there emotionally.  So I send cards.  And I call more often.  And I send emails with cool baby things I’ve found (I live, and procrastinate, vicariously).  And I pray that they know how ecstatic I am for them, even though I can’t offer them the hug they so deserve to prove it.

Today a friend told me some advice her major professor gave her regarding the process leading up to our comps: “You have to let people be where they are.”  For her it meant that you can’t force your committee to be more involved than they are. But for me, its significance is more literal.  I have to let myself be where I am and I have to live my life as it is now, not as my crossed fingers hope it will one day be.

And my life as it is now includes being thrilled that there will be so many babies waiting for me to play with the next time I visit Kentucky.