Eye of the Hurricane

The Pirate and I were inventorying the preserves last night, seeing what more we can make now to put up for winter. We'll have pumpkins soon, and I'll cook and puree them and freeze the meat for soup and stuff during the cold.
I started reflecting on the fact that three years ago, my life was constantly on fire. I had a new baby, a husband who was an active force of entropy in my life, a foster son who was bound and determined to make me pay for his family's sins, a job that was under near-constant threat and an ex-husband whose new wife hated me for ever having known him, let alone having had a kid with him. Ninety percent of my time was spent putting out fires of one kind or another, and the other ten percent was spent looking with longing at all of my friends and thinking "they're not this messed up. They don't have these problems."
Three years later I have a stable, secure job, two beautiful children, a new husband who's an active and capable life partner and nobody whose crises directly impact my life in a negative way. I'm finally looking up from my own life and thinking "My friends are a lot more messed up than I had ever realized."
The whole thing makes me a little sad. I wish that everyone could feel about their lives the way that I feel about mine - that their lives mean something, that they're moving in a good direction, that if you close your eyes and breathe for a minute, nothing bad will happen to you.
I want that for all my friends.