Asking Too Much

I haven't posted in a year.

I feel like that needs to be said in a whiny..."dear diary, i'm sorry for neglecting you" voice that I used to have when I was an awkward 12 year old writing in my diary about my crushes and my mean mommy that wouldn't let me wear bright red lipstick on my first day of 7th grade. I guess I feel neglectful; my whining above will have to suffice as penance.

It's been an interesting year. My husband and I bought a house. We're homeowners. And we got pregnant, had a miscarriage, and 62 seconds later got pregnant again. I'm four months along and doing well, minus the tri-weekly vomiting and the constant nausea. I could go on and on about the pregnancy symptoms no one ever mentions when you're a blushing, bright eyed, hopeful bride ready to go off birth control. But I'll save that for another day.

I guess I just wanted to say that today, today I'm lonely. A lot more than a house and a soon to come baby happened this year. In some ways, my husband and I grew up a little since last February. Together we've braved some intense relational storms that have left us closer to each other but distinctly distant to several very close individuals we have been deep friends with for years. Life has a way of changing relationships, and marriage has a way of becoming indirectly isolating. While marriage is like always being on a team, the game can get sort of confusing. And pregnancy, well, that has a way of ensuring that isolation in ways I never predicted or could have prepared for.

I don't think it's all bad and neither do I think this isolation is unhealthy. Two becoming one flesh and then creating life is heavy in the areas of responsibility and mystery and beauty and depth and weight. It's impossible to remain unchanged in the midst of that intensity. But I find myself surrounded by friends who can't quite relate. They're all single and childless. It's not that bridges have been burned, it's just that it takes many more bridges to relate than it used to. That goes both ways.

Needless to say, this loneliness, this isolation, goes both ways. They don't know what to say about my painfully swollen baby boobs and I don't get invited out anymore because the bars they go to are smokey. Mostly I'm fine with that. But today, I miss friends. I miss laughing at stupid things over a few glasses of cheap wine. I miss investing in something other than work, work, sleep, and my growing ass.

I am happily married and happily pregnant. I guess I just want the perfect trinity... I want to be happily social too.

Am I asking too much?