Welcome to Mommy Mondays, the one day of the week where I talk parenthood. The good and bad and funny and not. It's hit or miss, really.
On Sunday afternoon while my husband was golfing and I was recuperating from a weekend away, I put both of my children down for a nap and then I laid down myself.
I fell asleep quickly, deeply. I dreamed that while I was sleeping my three-year-old had cut off all of her hair and dyed the remaining bits bright pink. In the dream I was so upset about this that it made me start to have a panic attack. This meant, actually, that I was having a panic attack in real life. In the dream, my heart raced and my throat closed to where I couldn’t breathe. In real life, the same.
Later in the dream my husband found me on the stairs naked except for a furry sleep mask. I had been sleeping, dreaming, walking, and hypervenilating, and I didn’t know where the kids were.
He wasn’t mad at me, but I was very mad at myself. I was still dreaming.
We went down to the backyard, me now in a nightgown, with a sleep mask on top of my head, my daughter with very short, self-dyed hair, and we found my mom with a photographer there to take our family photos. I clung to my mom, physically held on to her so hard that I was almost dragging both of us to the ground. “Help me,” I pleaded with her, staring into her eyes, trying to make her understand that I was having trouble breathing, and that I had lost track of the children.
She assured me that my kids were fine, and that she understood I couldn’t breathe. And that she couldn’t help me.