Showered

This weekend, my friends here in Denver had a baby shower for me. It was really a great shower. I left feeling loved and fulfilled and so lucky to be surrounded by the amazing mother - friends that I have. But I was actually pretty nervous about the shower. Because, as I've mentioned many times here on this blog, I'm really scared about having a third child. I'm scared about having a girl after two boys. I'm scared about going back into infanthood with all that holding and carrying and dependency. I'm scared about not being – or not seeming – excited enough. I might be seven months pregnant, but I still feel barely prepared. When my big stomach knocks against something unexpectedly, it feels like A Metaphor for not recognizing and accepting the coming changes. I was experiencing some sort of performance anxiety at the thought of a shower.

I feel the need to explain myself. Or at least, I keep trying to understand my feelings in my own head. Do you ever have times when you can't really let go of something, and your brain just runs away trying to process it? You put your worries in this context and that context trying to understand how you arrived at this moment and these particular feelings. Maybe you need your life to feel like a coherent story, you need to make your feelings more orderly and neat in your mind? Maybe you need your feelings to be justified by something in the past in order to be at peace with them and accept them? But what? What is that key to it all making sense?

Anyway, at these times, when you are super uncomfortable with yourself, and doubting, and feeling like you can't really pull it all together and be the coherent person you mean to be (no matter what the photos say), this kind of love, attention, and support from your friends is just about the greatest gift that they can give you. I went home and cried, trying to figure out how I could thank them enough.