I didn't sleep well last night. I found myself awake at 1:30am until about 2:30am, than again at 4am until I decided to give up and get up at 5:30am. My mind has been racing since yesterday evening and, as we all know, once you stop doing what ever it is that keeps you busy during the day, your mind starts to overtake everything.

It all started when a friend of mine had a healthy baby girl yesterday. I'm happy for her and thrilled that they got the girl they were hoping for; however, as I was seeing all the well-wishes posted to her and all the comments that were left from her friends, all the pictures of everyone in the hospital room holding her baby, I started thinking about my own daughter's birth and our stay in the hospital. I didn't notice it then because I was so in love with my little angel and surrounded by my family while waiting to be discharged, and then I was so worried because they were keeping her, but as I look back on it there are some things that became very clear to me and made me really think about the reality regarding the people in my life.

While in the hospital after I had my daughter, only 2 people offered to come and visit and see my miracle girl. Whose than that, know how many did? 0. Any idea how many people offered to cook meals or help out with Reilly once we got home? 5. Know how many did? None. Any thoughts about the number of people who called to check on me in the 6-week period I was home? 3, and only 2 of them called me more than twice. Want to know how many people actually came to see me at all? 2. Some people I still haven't seen, some I still haven't even spoken to, and others have just been "too busy"  to come and share one of the most amazing, important things that has ever happened in my life.

I don't think it takes a genius to figure out where I'm going with this line of thinking, does it? 

I'll admit that I cried for a while when the realization of just how little people truly value me hit, but as my vision grew I discovered that I have no one to blame but myself. Somewhere along the like I unconsciously made the choice to surround myself by people who don't respect me and don't care enough about me to take action and be a real part of my life, and I can't blame that on anyone but me.

I know that friendship isn't easy and sometimes we need to make sacrifices, that in today's busy world it seems that people want "easy and no fuss" when it comes to friendships. I'm sorry, but I'm not built that way- I feel that I deserve some respect or at least some genuine I-give-a-shit emotion along the way!  Sadly I've discovered that sometimes the old adage "If you love something set it free. If it returns, you know it was true," is amazingly accurate because in the past years I've lost a few friendships by thinking it wasn't necessary to fight for attention but (and in spite of fearing that I'm going to sound "poor me" I'm going to say this), it turned out that I shouldn't have been as secure and as trusting in the friendship as I was because, apparently, I was really quite easy to move past and forget... But on the whole I thought the majority of the people I called my friends did actually care about me...

I thought my radar was getting better but I am obviously still blind to a lot of things. I think I need to start being a bit more diligent in who I'm surrounding myself with. I am going to have to be a bit more careful of who I let in to my life and I'm going to start letting go of the people who aren't really interested in being a true part of my life. I'm tired of being treated like I'm not worth the time, exhausted from trying to make sense of being ignored, and finished with feeling like I failed.

I'm taking control of my life again and I'm choosing to be respected because I know I deserve it.