I have my therapy appointment on Monday. It has been a hard month and in my mind I have been logging all the things things I want to talk about… the concerns, the frustrations, the utter confusions. I don’t go so far as to make an actual list, though some days it is tempting, lest I forget something important.

I don’t know why it has been such a hard month for me, though I have my suspicions: the forced break and July being the month we got pregnant with Devin. Not even cycling this month just makes 2 years ago seem so very far away. But I wasn’t even thinking about that until yesterday when the thought snapped into place and I leaned over to Den and said, “It’s July.”

But I don’t know. It could just as likely be one of those things, the normal ebb and flow of loss and infertility. Some months are just harder than others, it’s just how it is.

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I have felt myself drawing inward. When I am feeling down is when I most need support, and yet it is when I am the most sensitive. Instinctively I pull back, separating myself, giving myself a large buffer zone. It makes me feel even more alone, but social interactions can be full of anxiety. My paranoia starts sneaking in, frustrating me yet charming me at the same time. It becomes so hard to see things clearly. I wish I had the kind of self-confidence I project. I don’t. Sometimes I almost have it, but I’m always one little slip away from falling into self-doubt and fear. I have always felt this way – always the child who tried her best to please her teachers, fearful of falling short. But instead of becoming a friend-pleaser I isolated myself, doing my own thing instead of even trying to fit in. I was the loner, the bookworm, the geek. I was the weird one. Now I’m out in the real world, being an adult, and I find myself being far more normal than ever before. I feel comfortable in it, too, much to my surprize. But it makes me nervous, too. I feel like I twist and turn right along the edge, and I frequently have to fight the urge to run and hide before I get hurt. I am too sensitive, too soft.

Frequently I wonder what other people see. Not just when they look at me, but when they look at anything. When I drive down the road all the little things along the way now evoke memories for me. I have lived here for 4 years, and the way I see the town has changed because of my experiences. I frequently wonder as I drive along, how does my husband see these same streets? He’s lived here all his life, has had vastly different experiences than I have in my short 4 years. I try to wrap my brain around the idea that every single person driving through that intersection sees it in a different way, colored by their own personality and experiences. I wonder what my parents see when they visit; I try to remember how I saw it the very first time… how confusing it must have been.

It is the same way with people. Sometimes I stand in front of our full-length mirror and just stare at myself, tilting my head to the right and the left, squinting my eyes a little. I can spend the whole day looking down at my body and seeing one thing, then step in front of the mirror and be shocked that it looks so different from another person’s view. I lean forward to examine my nose, my eyes, that big zit that popped up on the side of my nose. I know every curve so very intimately, but then I think… if I saw myself in a crowd, would I recognize me? Would I think she had too large of a nose, would I wonder if that slightly pooched belly meant that she was pregnant? Would I think she moved gracefully or haltingly, is she tall or short? My mind struggles to picture it, but fails – I am too close to ever remove myself to the objective view.

Of all the things in the world, of all the knowledge, all the theories, all the philosophy and mathematics, the one thing I want to really truly understand I am simply too wrapped up in to ever really know. I’m not sure it’s even possible to ever truly understand oneself, though that doesn’t stop us from trying. There are always discoveries, there are degrees to attain. But there is no equation, there is no guidebook. We’re all just flailing around, doing the best that we can.