Growing up, I felt like all of my friends and I had our whole lives mapped out to a tee. We knew exactly what we were going to do, when we were going to do it, who we were going to do it with, and how we were going to do it. I mean, I was a huge nerd, so I even had a diagram drawn out of my perfect adult life. College, marriage, and then kids that would all be raised together to become best friends with giant vacations together and eventually become in-laws as our children fell in love and got married as well.
And yes, although the future that I live in now is bright and exciting, it's also understandably a little far off.
I had my children and got married young - all done by 21 years old. It wasn't a competition. I just have loved my husband from the very beginning and couldn't wait to start a family together.
My friends were all excited, of course. They were amazing friends who loved shopping for those tiny clothes and visiting to hold their cuddly selves. Well, as much as they could while still being college students with full-time jobs. But a loneliness that I'd never expected settled in early on.
I was the first of my friends to have a baby, and there was no one that I felt that I could relate to anymore. Which has left my friends and I in different places in our lives. Neither is better, neither is worse, but neither seems to have real room for the other.
Because as my friends finish up college, start careers, and travel the edges of the world, I spend the lot of my time doing household chores, playing with my very imaginative kids, and writing all things motherhood. Both of us filling up our social media with cute pictures, but theirs not featuring babies over themselves so prominently. Both suffering from sleep deprivation but for very different reasons. I mean, sure we have the same sense of humor still and the same dreams - we're the same people we've always been - and yet we aren't.
But mourning my youth while celebrating my new identity as a mother has been the best learning experience. I've had to turn to online forums, books, Google, and outside groups of moms instead of texting my friends. I had to watch older moms at the park and try to set up little playdates - the childhood I thought my kids would have - and felt too insecure to do so. I saw pictures of my friends plastered all over social media - the ones I've always been in before - and felt left out. I've clapped at my children's first steps, words, and bites of solid food to realize that I didn't have quite the same audience to share it all with.
I wasn't totally abandoned. My friends would shoot texts sometimes or invite me out here and there. One or two would come visit. But the line was drawn as soon as I got pregnant, a line that separated our lives fundamentally. And I was left on my side with a blazing trail to figure out this motherhood thing all on my own without the support of the ever-important tribe I always thought that I would have.
I was lonely, but completely okay. Because motherhood has given me the confidence to talk to other moms, older moms, new moms. It gave me the chance to create new friends, bot as replacements, but as a bigger support system. I've of course kept touch with a few friends, but I'm learning to stop expecting them to fill a need that they just simply aren't equipped to.
No mom has this whole parenting thing down perfectly. But I think that in this last year - I've finally found my place, refined my role, and embraced the season of life that I am now in. The season where I can connect with other moms in an instant. The season where I've found friends who are finally starting to have kids. The season where I am striving to be the best wife and mother that I can be regardless of who is in the background.
I was the first of my friends to have a baby. I was lonely, I was lost, I was so scared, and I was so unsure. But now I get to be the first of my friends to lend support, experience, and understanding to my friends as they now begin to have kids.
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