I had a situation at work once that made me look at my life in a negative way. I couldn’t help but to look at one of my co-workers who returned to work after having a baby in an unflattering light. I thought to myself, "She's living the life that I'm supposed to be living". “How dare she flaunt it in front of me.” I didn’t desire to be her. Neither did I envy her because quite frankly, she appeared to be needy and often starved for attention. Ironically, it was that lack that I identified with. I didn’t lack attention in my marriage or in my professional life, but I was lacking something I wanted so dearly, a child. I think the thing that really hurt me at that time was when I opened my email and read that my co-worker was returning to work only part-time, so she could spend more time with her growing family. That's when my former plans hit me smack in the face. My plan was to get pregnant and eventually decrease my hours to part-time. Unfortunately, that never happened and the email reminded me of that.
The entire day, all I could think about was the fact that she was living out my dream. I also began to wonder if planned pregnancies were overall more difficult to achieve. According to the Guttmacher Institute, the average American woman spends about five years trying to become pregnant and nearly three quarters of her reproductive life trying to avoid pregnancy. I also learned that 51 percent of 6.6 million pregnancies in the United States are unintended. That means the pregnancies were either mistimed or unwanted, while leaving about 49 percent of the pregnancies planned. The sad thing was that information just didn't help my bothersome thoughts. I remember tossing and turning the night before she returned, dreading to hear stories about her newborn baby. In fact, I was also dreading all the stories from the other parents in the office. I swear the next morning came too quickly. The next thing I knew, I was forced to get my weightless (limp) body out of bed and prepare for work. I had a hard time getting myself together, and moved extremely slow.
That morning I suddenly had a flashback of an incident. I was at the airport in Atlanta rushing for a flight to New Orleans. There in the security checkpoint line was a woman holding her baby on her hip. This may sound crazy, but I really wanted to walk over and slap her. The reason was simply because this woman was a mother. My husband was standing alongside me. I turned to him and said, "Honey, I don't like her." He questioned why and when I gave him my reason he laughed it off, but I was serious. I was angry at nearly every woman prancing around with a child. But despite my depression, I ended up laughing it off like my husband did. By the way, I'm not crazy and would never do any such thing. However, I've experienced some emotional moments during this "trying to conceive" period.
Anyway, eventually it was about that time for me to leave the house and go to work. During my drive all I could do was think about a way to be happy. I still have to do that sometimes to keep myself from falling apart. While in the car, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a friend about happiness, and how it is a choice. That very moment I said out loud, "You will choose happiness". I repeated it slowly several times so that it would sink in. Of course I didn't know how I was going to do so, and was nervous all the way up until I walked inside the office. But without much thought, that's what I did. I began to smile. It was a real one too, and not like the smiles I would put on just to keep folks from seeing my vulnerable side. I did it. I made it through the day with all the pictures and stories.
In short, it truly felt good choosing happiness because we should rejoice with others. So today I ask, when faced with heartache, do you choose happiness over the hurt? I’m a witness it works.
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