What history can teach us

I sort of did feel better after typing yesterday's blog. I told M about it and he kind of looked at me askance over pupusas in a very loud restaurant. It was one of those moments when i can see him struggling to try to know what it might be like to be inside my brain. I love that.

Like if I cry just because it is 7dpo and I feel nothing, even though of course you do not feel anything after 7dpo, every obsessive researcher on the TTC scene knows that. He gamely trys to follow along, as I question "Well, do I really really believe it? Maybe I sort of secretly, in a never admit it to anyone really outloud or even silently to myself at night in the dark kind of way think if I were pregnant I would know?" Then he shakes his head and says, "we really cannot know the answer to that."

I had a chemical pregnancy about 3 months ago. I managed to convince myself that I knew at the end of that cycle--maybe maybe my nipples were sore in a different way. But, if I knew, why did I still shake and wonder and then kind of know when the very faint line appeared that it would be gone within an hour.

I am excellent at rewriting my own TTC history you see! I am actually an historian by profession (sort of, sorry if too cryptic--a girl's gotta preserve some sense of anonymity when she spills the secret contents of her rushing thoughts!) and my specialty is to spin and twist bits and pieces of history together to create new academic arguments. It turns out Western history is MUCH more pliable than my personal fertility history. I can make all kinds of outcomes happen in the former arena, simply by lining up similarities, evidence, and overarching the bundle with some theory or pithy idea. With the latter, I have no control. And ahhh...therein lies the very annoying, ever frustrating rub. Hmm...I'd say it is not a great night of hopfulness in the M&M house (that's our house). I swear, I will be funny and hopeful tomorow. Oh no, I am even trying to spin my blog now!!! Yikers!

You see, in the end, history cannot really teach me in this instance how I will know I am pregnant without making it through the TWW. I really have never been pregnant, not REALLY. I have no basis from which to learn. What history can teach me is what has made this process tortorous and what has made it bearable and I need to learn to craft and spin my life in the direction of the bearable while I build new histories, that is, while I build a future.