It’s funny (not ha-ha, but hmmmm). I somehow keep thinking that all I’d like to be is normal again (whatever that actually is), that I could have some semblance of myself back before all this happened. Maybe I could overhear a bit of conversation about baby names and not feel sucker-punched. It was so much simpler then, and I didn’t even know it. I know that things are what they are, and the only way to go forward is to deal. I also know that anyplace is better than here, emotionally. Have you all heard that saying “you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here”? Seems appropriate….

I thought I’d made a lot of progress, but then I wonder just how much when I can be bungeed back to these feelings so fucking hard and so fucking fast. It’s depressing, and frankly a bit frightening. I don’t know how to do this. And when I try to be “normal”, I end up in situations that I desperately don’t want to be in, can’t participate in. Out to lunch with co-workers (kid school stories, sibling stories, pregnancy stories – I swear to Christ these women have absolutely nothing else to talk about), dinner with friends (“when are you planning on having children” to each other). The only “safe” place to be is with people who know and understand, and they are so few. The isolation with IF is just so hard…. I’ve sent the ambassador (D) to more than a few functions I didn’t feel that I could handle, and he can’t quite understand why it is I’m not going. That’s not true, he can. He just has the ability to compartmentalize, and I don’t, I never have. I truly, truly envy that. I just don’t have the energy to put a bad conversation into perspective anymore. I don’t care why they said it – I’m done making excuses for other people. At some point, a jackass is a jackass, and thus our social circle gets pared back even more….

So “normal” is a word I won’t recognize anymore. It’s something that has to be redefined and sculpted for me, and me alone. I don’t know where my normal is, but I hope I can still find it eventually.