Like everybody, I have a list of people who I don't like. These are people who can put me in a bad mood just at the mere sight of them.
Now, let's say you were to somehow replay these people's comments and behaviors to some kind of impartial focus group. In the case of most of the people I don't like, the focus group would see my side of things.
But there are a couple of people who are perfectly reasonable and nice, and I hate them anyway. It's just the classic case of being a bad personality match.
If you've read this blog and/or met me, you know that I'm a neurotic worrier who beats herself up for all kinds of reasons. So, as you can imagine, I'm not a great match with people who are overly-confident.
Many overly-confident people are perfectly nice and pleasant to be around. But I can't stand to be around them, and here's why: I don't like how they make me feel about myself.
Let me say, the discomfort I feel around these people is all on me. They never said or did anything to hurt me. It's just they get around me with their "I have life all figured out" attitude, and I start to wonder what's wrong with me for not having life all figured out.
Why am I talking about this? Because I saw one of these people on Saturday.
She was a former co-worker, who I will refer to as N, which is her first initial, and anyway I'm going to give enough identifying details that I'm not protecting her anonymity in any way. (One of the advantages of having a not-too-famous blog is that you can more or less be guaranteed that the person you're trash-talking isn't reading this.)
Here's the story. N was 23 years old and engaged to be married. I was 28 and had been married two years. In mid-August 2006, I was about 14 weeks pregnant with Nathan, and it was a Monday and I was preparing to announce my pregnancy to my boss the next day. I would then make my general announcement to the rest of the office after that. So, that Monday morning, N bounces over to my cubicle all hushy-hushy and announces to my co-worker Katie and me that she just found out the previous week that she was pregnant. Now, let me note that the week she found out she was pregnant was also the week she sent out her wedding invitations, which is not entirely an ideal situation.
Nonetheless, N was overjoyed, and certain life would just be perfect for her from here on out. That pretty much sums up the next 6-7 months of our simultaneously-pregnant lives. Despite the fact that I had a completely planned pregnancy in the confines of a financially- and emotionally-stable marriage, I was panicked out of my mind about having a baby. Meanwhile, N was just obsessed with her cute little belly. She referred to me as "a fellow prego," which is a term I can't stand, because Prego is a spaghetti sauce. Also, I am more than a uterus with a head.
I remember at one point, N and I were discussing those little tiny nail clippers that you use on babies. N was like, "Oh, aren't those soooo cute?" Meanwhile, I was panicking that I would cut off a chunk of my baby's finger with those. (I did cut him, actually, and apparently so did everybody else, at least according to the comments on today's Ask Moxie post.)
So, that nail clipper pretty much sums up my relationship with N. She was totally confident about everything, and I was totally insecure about everything, and I hated myself whenever I was around her.
So, I had Nathan, and seven weeks later N had a baby girl. She never came back to work, at least not in any official capacity. She did pop in for lunch one day, all slim and trim with her five-weeks-postpartum body, even though she didn't breastfeed, because she thought breastfeeding was gross. (Breastfeeding is said to help you lose the baby weight faster. I'm still waiting.) She bragged that her 5-week-old was sleeping through the night; my three-month-old was not.
N would send monthly e-mails with pictures and updates on her kid's stats. Now, between the time that Nathan was one and two months old, I had worked like you wouldn't believe to try to get his weight up. I pumped, supplemented with formula, and generally shoved either a real or artificial nipple in his mouth hourly whether he liked it or not. He made it to 10 pounds by his two-month appointment. That same day, I got N's e-mail that her three-week-old daughter was also 10 pounds.
In hindsight, I don't give a rip about how much my kid weighed when he was an infant. But at the time, his weight was my great obsession. And to see everything working out so well for N made me so upset.
Then there was the whole postpartum depression issue. I remember at some point, saying to a former co-worker, "It's not fair that I did everything right, waiting until the right time in my marriage and career to have a baby, while N just kind of did what she wanted and flew by the seat of her pants. And yet she just skates by with everything working out for her, while I end up with some major depression."
It was the major depression that ended my desire to have another baby. So when N announced on Facebook, just shortly after our babies turned one, that she was pregnant again, I couldn't take it. I un-friended her. I hated that my own feelings of jealousy had caused me to shun her, but I also knew that there was no point in keeping somebody hurtful in my electronic life.
And I thought of her occasionally in the two years or so since the un-friending, usually when I'd see her comment on a mutual friend's status. But I didn't give her a lot of thought until I saw her at the 5K on Saturday.
Fortunately I saw her from afar. If she saw me, she didn't run up to say hello. But she still upset me.
A couple days later, I e-mailed a former co-worker who also knew N, complaining that I had seen her, and, worse, she was super skinny. My friend replied that N was so skinny because she had just completed the marathon.
Not helping.
I hate that I'm still wasting time and energy comparing myself to N and making myself feel bad. I hate that N's mere presence makes me that upset. I hate that I even dislike her at all, because my true issues are with myself and my own insecurities.
I'm absolutely certain that this woman spends no time and energy thinking about me. And even if she does see my name on a comment on somebody else's status on Facebook, the reminder of my existence doesn't stir up visceral negative feelings in her.
Ultimately, this is a story of jealousy. I'm jealous of her self-confidence, and how everything just seems to work out for her. I'm jealous that there are people in the world who don't spend every minute questioning their every decision.
I don't know why I wrote this post. I guess to just get my feelings out. And to tell other neurotic people in the world that they aren't alone.
I also wrote it to remind myself not to compare my life to other people's. I think a quote from a ring I bought at Target provides some pretty good advice on this matter:
Live the life you love; love the life you live.
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