no sleep, coop preschool, feeling left out

so i went to bed at almost 2 and then by 4:30 story woke up with a gas bubble and sea wanted to nurse and after nursing both of them on and off while trying to soothe the other by 5:15 i was UP and unable to go back to sleep...i've been online replying to e-mails, checking my evite for sea's 3rd bday party (surprisingly no one rsvped between the hours of 2 and 5 a.m.?!), posting to an organic coop i am the spreadsheet supervisor for, posting to a coop preschool i've been asked to join and then posting to a second coop preschool a friend of mine is initiating but i set up a yahoo group for...so yeah, with no "career" or job other than stay-at-home mommy, i have kept myself very busy. i left out that i try to maintain a mac website with photos, this blog and just managing all the photos i take daily (plus weddings, vacation, etc.). then on top of that i always have little side projects for all these photos...wedding albums, photos from birthday parties and showers that end up being the gift i give...now to get them done...

ok, so this leads me to the last topic in this blog's subject "feeling left out". i definitely have childhood issues with rejection and/or feeling left out. i was always a very social child and liked to be the life of the party. i would often impose myself on others and feel rejected when they didn't share my enthusiasm or find me as entertaining and exciting as i found myself. i always had plenty of friends and every year of elementary had someone i considered my "best" friend. this is what got me in to even more trouble. inevitably one of these friends would want to be friends or at least best friends with someone else. so we were always keeping track of who our best friend was and this didn't always correspond with what that said friend thought their best friend was. so say i'm person A and i think person B is my best friend but she considers person C to be her best friend and really wants to be best friends with person D etc.

somehow when i was young it was really important to keep track of these things and know who your best friend was at any given time and i often felt very rejected and hurt when my best friend would leave me for a new best friend. in fact, in doing some reflection, this may explain why my husband was also my first boyfriend...i always felt like i was in a committed relationship with all of these girlfriends and it required so much work and pain that i had no desire for that with a boyfriend in high school or college.

but i grew up and matured some and was able to maintain several friendships at once and not rank them and many of these people didn't get their feeelings hurt if i spent time with the other friends, etc. but somehow even today as an adult with children forming their own friendships, i still have all kinds of issues with these things! i found out one of my closest friends has been getting together with two of my other friends in a regular weekly playgroup for about 3 months and i haven't been invited to bring sea. so immediately i felt this surge of rejection like i used to experience as a child and all the worst case scenarios started going through my mind "why am i not a good enough friend to be included? is it me? do they not like sea? what have i done wrong? what do i need to do to be a good enough friend to be included? have i offended them somehow? did they just not think of me or did they actually decide not to include me?" etc.

remember i am setting this blog up with a description of my childhood issues as a foundation and disclaimer to how silly this all is...i am aware on a rational level that people just get busy and the invite/lack of invite could be as simple as they ran in to that person and decided to get together or live right around the block and it was easy or last minute, etc. etc. but i got my feelings hurt or felt left out because this group continued to meet for several weeks without ever including me. is that unreasonable? i'd really like comments on this topic because i know i can be very irrational in this area and a lot of it is coming from childhood issues i want to shield sea from if i can get in touch with it myself...i should add that i was very premenstrual yesterday when i learned this so the whacked out hormones didn't help my reasonability. (my spell checker is telling me this isn't a word but i'm ignoring it because i'm on a roll and need to get these ideas off my chest)

so i shared these feelings with the friend who had informed me about the group getting together for a playgroup (and i should make a note to myself here that if she really didn't want me to be a part of this, why would she have even mentioned that they had been getting together?) and she felt badly. i didn't mean to make her feel badly, i just wanted her to know how i felt so i wouldn't be passive aggressive or internalize my frustration or obsess over this but not talk about it, etc. non-healthy ways i have dealt with these things in the past. she was glad i told her and i was glad she called me back and wanted to talk about it instead of avoiding or minimizing the issue. she didn't really have an explanation for why i wasn't invited but i'm not sure that i necessarily needed one? or do i? i'm really torn on how much i want to analyze this and figure out the "whys"...maybe it is better to focus on the conflict resolution and dealing with these issues to improve them...i still feel like i need to talk to the other friend about it because i already feel like i make more effort with her than she makes with me. sometimes i find myself ranking these things in my head...i guess i'd rather be the friend who invites others more, tries to reach out, stays in touch, etc. than the one who isn't coming through as much but it is another level of rejection when you keep calling to check on someone, invite them places, etc. and they keep turning you down or don't call back or i guess initiate on their end. i don't want to keep track of these things, i really don't. but they build up so when something like this playgroup meeting without inviting me happens i feel like "why is she able to get together with other friends but not me?"

PLEASE comment as i'm feeling so juvenile right now. i'm going to talk to this other friend this week. i know it really isn't personal. she gets busy, works in the home, doesn't have as much free time as me, isn't naturally as desperately needing social networks as me, etc.

i'm getting bored with this topic so i want to move on to the other related issue weighing on my mind...the coop preschools i've joined. i've been wanting to form one of these for so long and have so many friends i have told this to and would want to include. but now two separate friends have started them and though they are open to including others, i am limited by size constraints and the agendas of the other members. so i just wanted to let any of my readers know that i am still thinking of you for this coop and if you are interested in joining, let me know and i'll talk to both group "leaders" to see if you can fit in to either the tues or thurs group and if not there are 3 other days of the week i can work with you on to try and include anyone interested so no one else has to feel left out like i did yesterday...

why do my posts always feel so dramatic? manuel commends me for putting myself out there in such a vulnerable way but gets a little nervous for me at the same time. i'm nervous for myself being so vulnerable and posting about such personal issues but i'm grateful to have such a great network of friends that care about me and each other that i think this can be productive for everyone.

oh, if you live locally and want to come to sea's birthday party, post a comment and i'll send you the evite...that is one more thing i don't want anyone to feel left out about.

i'm exhausted dealing with all this. but it is now 7:30 and my family is just about to wake up just as i'm just about ready to go to sleep. i guess i'll get ready to go to coop preschool and update you how this is all playing out as it unfolds. i welcome your comments...sincerely, denise