My So-Called Life

I have a mental picture of myself, as I'm sure we all do. I think I know who I am, what's important to me, which way my internal compass is pointing. I think I'm a good person, that I think about others, that I know right from wrong and pretty reliably do the right thing. I'm starting to wonder, though, if my mental self-portrait is as inaccurate as the physical one - I'm always surprised when I look in a mirror and see my sagging post-baby body instead of the pretty young thing I somehow still feel like.

I moved to this city 11 years ago, and for ages it felt really foreign to me. Everything is different from what used to be home - the pace is different, the accent is different, the people are different, the climate is different. For several years, I lived with the assumption that I'd work myself back home eventually, but then I married a man with children who live here and the roots began to grow. After I had children of my own and stopped working full time, I began meeting wonderful people, mostly women, who were thoughtful and kind and funny and supportive and I gradually found myself enmeshed in a real community for the first time in my adult life. I can't describe the deep feeling of happiness it has given me to be a part of this group without sounding trite or hyperbolic.

Now I'm afraid that I have lost the love and trust of one of my closest friends in this tribe of mothers, someone who has been such a part of my life that my memories of my own children are tied up with her face. I have been talking to her in my head, trying to explain, trying to find the words to excuse myself, but everything ends up sounding like just that - excuses. I find myself engaged in an orgy of misplaced apology, begging forgiveness from cut-off strangers at intersections and bumped-into shoppers at grocery stores with an excess of fervor that must take them aback. I'm just full of remorse and regret. The good intentions I thought were a foundation aren't holding up to scrutiny - they turn out to be empty air and count for nothing.