Two-Faced

Lately, I feel like I'm two separate people. The first one is the person I think I think of as the "before" me -- generally happy, optimistic, snarky but in a good-natured way. That's the me that posts the sunshine and flowers posts about how much I love my kid, my husband, my life, etc. It's the me that calls my friend who's just given birth and offers to take her older kid to the park so she can get some bonding time with the new baby. The me that's teary with happiness for my sister-in-law, who gave birth to her son today.

And then there's this bitch. She's whiny and negative and morose and bitter. She's the one who felt a flash of blinding rage when she found out that said sister-in-law was having a boy, because damn it! Isn't it enough that we were due at the same time and she gets to keep her baby and mine's dead? Isn't it enough that she has the first grandchild and the favoritism that goes along with that? No, she has to go and have the first damn grandson, too. The bitch is also the one that, every time I sit down at the computer to write a blog post, pushes the cute and sweet and nice things I'd wanted to write about out of my head and substitutes a rant or a whine or something else equally unpleasant.

The scary thing is, it's not just on this blog that I seem to have developed multiple personalities. I feel split in my real life, too. Like I'll be enjoying a perfectly nice day with M and the Boy, and still in the background is the hum of pain and anger that I can't seem to be rid of, no matter how often I remind myself how much I have in my life and how lucky I am.

I really don't like being this person. I liked myself happy. I was proud to be a nice person. And when I catch myself silently weighing in my head whether yet another of my newly knocked-up friends really deserves to be pregnant, I kind of hate the person I've become. I am working hard on squelching these tendencies, and I have made progress. But it's harder than I thought it would be.

I keep hoping that if we do manage to get pregnant and have a second child, that I'll go back to being the "old" me. Let's just hope that by the time I'm ready to be her again, I won't have forgotten what it's like not to be bitter.