It Doesn't Feel Real Anymore

In recent weeks, it doesn't feel like this whole foster care process is real anymore. 

There is a room that has a bed and a crib, but now it just feels like a prop, like something that is just THERE.

It's more than just feeling impatient or feeling like it's never going to actually happen.  It's feeling like everything I have done to get to this point was just in a fake world.  Like I have applied to get a baby doll, rather than to have an actual child in my house.  Feeling detached.  Almost like, "Well, foster care was something that I WAS doing, but I'm not doing it anymore."

When I started the process, I knew that my life was about to change in a HUGE way.  I had mentally prepared myself for all of the big changes - the lack of sleep, the inability to travel like I always have, etc.  And it feels like recently, I have mentally UN-prepared myself for that.  That I am now thinking my life will continue as it always has, and nothing will actually change. 

In the fall, I planned several trips to visit friends while I was still free to go where I wanted when I wanted - I called it the "babymoon."  A couple of months ago, I planned a trip in April to go to Disney World with my dad, sister, and nephew.  I almost didn't commit to it because I figured I would have a child by then, but I decided that if I got a call for a child, I would be up front about the trip and figure out how it was going to be dealt with at the time the call came through.  There were several other trip possibilities floating around, but I was hesitant to plan anything else, not knowing what the situation would be.  Then a few weeks ago, I decided that I was not putting my life on hold anymore, and planned another trip in April to visit a friend in Virginia; as well as a trip to go to a two-day continuing education course out of town in May.  With the mindset that since the foster care stuff is in an alternate reality that I have now split off from, I will just do what I do. 

I guess that's it... Back when I was still in the thick of DOING things to get my foster care license, the reality was that I was going to be a foster parent, and my single traveling life was in my past (or maybe the alternate reality).  Now that I am just SITTING and WAITING, the foster care journey has transferred to be the alternate reality; and I now am back to the reality being that I am single and go where I want when I want. 

I don't know exactly how this happened, except that there has just been so long without any progress, that it no longer feels real.  I don't know how this post has come across or if it makes any sense.  It's more just mentally processing in writing...  I just hope that once the reality becomes that I will actually be a foster mom, that I am back on board with that reality.