Fissures of jealousy

So I had a pretty decent weekend. It wasn't spectacular in any super way but the time spent with family both blood and not was awesome. Somewhere though in the back of mind as I trolled social media throughout that time I found myself a little off kilter. Like somewhere in this head of mine tiny fissures of jealousy were creeping in. You see my life is awesome and I've been trying to enjoy some of the little things in life more as much as I can but sometimes those ugly little fissures appear. As I lay in bed last night unable to turn my crazy brain off I tried to remind myself how lucky I truly am. How loved and cared for I am. One thing is true though while I share my awesome at times life with my little one I am missing out. She is missing out. She doesn't get to experience the life I wished for her. 

It's not a bad life just different than I ever thought it would be. Then I began to think about the little things missing from my own lack of relationship. The hand holding in the car with the person you are sharing your life with, the cuddles and warmth missing from the other side of the bed, the loss of shared joy in an unexpected moment of awesome, just sharing that with a significant other. It's missing from my life and at times I miss it so bad it stings me to my core. I think for a long time after the little ones father left I didn't truly have time to miss it. I was after all a newly single mom, a student and a worker. Now though as time is passing and I see happy people with their significant others and their families it scratches at me like the repetitive motion of a tattoo gun. 

Cue jealousy. Cue guilt for having that jealousy. So much so that I've started to avoid socializing with people I love because of it. It hurts to watch sometimes. It hurts knowing that at the end of the party, night out, fun adventure they get to go home and share the experience together while I go home  to emptiness where once there was none. Then it gets me thinking that despite the bad maybe it could have worked out if I'd been different. Then that quickly dissipates and reality again takes hold.

Nope. It just wasn't meant to be. And the timing was better this way than if we had suffered with each other for longer.  He has moved on and even though it wasn't with me it hurts too. Again with the spiral of jealousy. Not of his new whatever she is but that he gets that and I don't. He was the one who did us wrong not I. I forgave so many things over the course of our marriage and supported so many thing despite myself and yet here I am alone. I would like to think that I'm no longer bitter but sometimes when those fissures open up I can feel it. 

The tiny cracks that relationship left on my heart and soul are still there in these moments of weakness brought on by jealousy. I don't want him back but I want that closeness back. The shared days the support of each other the fingers intertwined together. And in those moments of jealousy where those little cracks become larger than they should I try to stomp them back down and sometimes it's harder than others. This was what was racing through my mind last night. Why are you jealous I tried to rationalize with myself. Why aren't you happy for this person or that, they have what they never thought they could.  Maybe it's because for a fleeting second I remember having it and think that maybe I could have it again. 

I know that I won't always feel this way and to be jealous isn't how I want to be but at the same time maybe it isn't jealousy at all. Maybe it's the longing that is seeping out of those fissures. The longing to give my kid an example of an awesome relationship and the experiences that come with it. 

What if it isn't the selfishness of jealousy I feel it is but the drive to give her that instead.