How do I know this isn’t just in my head

Honest answer: the cards can't tell you that. A shuffled deck has no access to your life — the image you saw in the King of Wands was you recognizing your own month, not the deck reporting on it. So "it's in my head" is the correct suspicion to hold about the *reading*.

The only honest split is between the part that was you and the part that was checkable:

• Yours: that you're surveying rather than committing, that you feel like you're in the driving seat. I supplied structure and a vocabulary for it. You supplied every fact.
• Not yours: the page. The two columns with time, cost, and who you are afterward, plus the line next to each about what actually happened this month. That either matches your memory or it doesn't. If the writing contradicts the reading, the writing wins and the reading was wrong.

So the test isn't whether the cards feel external. It's whether the record you produce in 48 hours says something you didn't already believe. If it does, you have evidence. If it only confirms what you walked in with, you have a mood — which is worth having, but it isn't a direction, and no spread can upgrade it into one.

If the two columns come back ambiguous — both paths look defensible, neither pulls you — that's not a failure of the exercise. It means the real question isn't which path; it's why the surveying hasn't resolved. That one is worth a fresh draw, and I'll pull it then.