I hate these feelings

My friends, and their daughters, are going to a cabin this weekend. My daughter and I are not. There are a lot of reasons I decided not to go, but none of them feel very compelling now that the weekend is upon us. … Except that is not a fair statement because we could say we want to come today and they would gladly make room. And yet we’re still not going.

And I have a lot of feelings about it. None of them are good. It brings up a lot of sadness. And self-doubt. It opens old wounds, or at least irritates them. Mostly I just feel sad because I could really use a weekend away with my ladies, and I’m not getting that. And I feel left out because after spending so much time together during the pandemic, they will be making memories without me for the first time.

And I worry it’s the first of many times, because it’s happened to me before.

And layered on top of all my sadness is the guilt I feel about my daughter also missing out. At least she doesn’t know about it. But I do. And she’ll probably find out, eventually.

After college, my three best girl friends started traveling and I could never join. I never had the money or the time (they always went in October, a great month to travel and a terrible month for a teacher to take a week off). I was always sad to miss out, but relieved not to be spending thousands of dollars to fly half way across the world (they were ambitious about their vacations).

Eventually I had a messy falling out with one member of that group when I found out she shared things with the other two that she didn’t tell me (really big, really important things). After that friendship imploded, I had to step away from the group. They still communicate regularly, but I need to reach out to the other two individually, which is hard. Basically I lost a really important friend group, and it’s one of the great losses of my 30s. These were my roommates in college; my best girl friends. And it seems like I can track our demise back to vacations they started taking without me.

{Thought I know, rationally, it is WAY more complicated than that.}

I feel very grateful that my friends are in similar financial situations to my own and never try to plan trips I can’t afford, but it’s much easier for all of them to take a day or two off to enjoy a longer weekend away. That is just really hard for me right now, and honestly all during the school year.

They are all still working from home (well except the nurse who has never worked from home), and getting tons done now that their kids are FINALLY back in school full time. Meanwhile my life looks totally different from last year. I have way less flexibility than they do now.

And they are all totally over the pandemic, while I’m still waiting for my kids to be vaccinated. And it’s hard because I know both points of view are valid. Getting together with very close friends in a meaningful way is absolutely worth the (low, for us right now as our numbers are way down) risk of contracting Covid and the very low chance the unvaccinated 11 year olds having bad outcomes. I don’t actually think they are being reckless or irresponsible. I just can’t mange the logistical nightmare of having one of my kids getting Covid, and the long, protracted quarantine that would result for that child, and also the other.

I also have my husband and son to consider. It feels like an especially shitty move to whisk our daughter away for a friend weekend, literally five days after the weekend he was supposed to go away with his friends. Leaving him with our son would just exacerbate that (he’s really difficult right now).

It just sucks and I’m sad about it and I thought I’d put it out there, because I know it’s a murky time in pandemic-decision-making-land right now and I thought other people might appreciate knowing they are not alone if they are making social decisions that feel like they suck now matter what.

I hate these feelings, and I really hope they go away next week. I just really hate feeling like this.