Can I be a different person?

I felt surprise sadness today attending my married friends' baby shower (how do you write that to say that both people are your friends? it's not "a friend's baby shower" but is it "my friends' baby shower"? That sounds odd).

And yeah, some of the sadness was every person there was in a couple. The two women by themselves had husbands at home. Am I at that age already? I feel to young to be. The age where everyone is hitched. Plus the fact I was the only person there from the circle of friends I knew them from - our church in San Francisco. So basically it felt like I was meeting everyone there for the first or second (you know what I mean) time. I hadn't expected that.

I am sincerely happy for them because both Ruben and Lisa are really cool people and I would consider them close friends. Not bc we spend a lot of time together now but bc we once did. I consider them my closest friends from SF, and the easy companionship I felt with them, I haven't felt with a lot of other people. Or at least not as easily. I felt happy to buy a special present for them (books as a baby shower gift - the idea from my mom and I really like it), and to go to the craft store to buy special baby trinkets for the cupcakes I made for the shower. So I didn't lead up today feeling sad about how they're married and about to have a baby, and I'm not.

And I still don't think that's primarily where the sadness came from.

I miss their friendship. I hate how transient SF is and everyone came, and everyone left including me, and that brief moment of hanging out easily and common friendship is gone. Like college I guess but in college you knew the end was coming. SF has that same 4-5 yr span but it feels unexpected. R & L were close with me during some hard times in SF - even driving back tonight, I heard God during talking to Him about this sadness and He said at least I got their friendship during a time when I needed it most. True. I think surviving would have been a lot tougher without them.

I think I envy their easygoingness, and want to be that kind of person. I think that's where the sadness is mainly from, besides feeling like I'm visiting old past friendships instead of live active ones. I do think they are both more "go with the flow" than I am but I also wonder how much I transfer my imagination onto who I think they are. I want to be a different person, less intense, less anxious, less angry and critical and frustrated, less worried, less reliving past wounds and mistakes, and I see that kind of person I am striving to be in them. Not that they're not faultless. I guess I just like their faults more than I like my own.

I want more peace and contentment with my life no matter what situation I'm in - I really think that's the crux of what's bothering me. But I can't get out of my own skin. I can't leave this person behind. Can I trade, God? Can I be a different person?

I'm reminded of my own post awhile back about how everyone envies and is envied. Just as you're staring longingly at the person next to you's body/face/character/gifts/money/marriage/children, someone is staring and envying something about you.

But it doesn't always feel like that, does it?