Sappy!

I've been having a lot of migraine/tension migraine problems for a while now. I went to the clinic here in town and the doctor I visited with set me up on two new medications and referred me for physical therapy once a week to help with my neck/shoulder tension and pain. I started one of the new medications right away last night, instructed to take the medicine before bed time. This one is to help with sleep and that, in turn, will help with my tension migraines.

This drug must be really loopy because I had the absolute most vivid and disturbing dream I have ever had.

In my dreams, I never see faces. I only see shoulders and down and I am left with the context clues to figure out who is who in my dreams. The feeling that the person gives me is what I have to decifer and make out who that person is supposed to be (or represent) in my dream. In the dream I had last night, I knew who everyone was because I saw every part of them, including their face.

I don't recall what was going on in the beginning of the dream, I'm assuming that part isn't supposed to matter. But my husband and I were being chased and we had our daughters with us. We parked outside of a house and Miss C chose to stay in the car. Miss A decided she wanted to come with us. We were only going in the house to trap the person chasing us. Just when we thought we had it figured out and had the guy trapped and secured, we noticed A wasn't with us. I panicked and ran back into the last room I had seen her in. The guy was standing over her lifeless body, laughing manically. Christian dragged me out of the house, to the car and drove away. I remember feeling like there was nothing left in the world. I drove myself back to that house to take A's body only to find that her body was gone.

My father had come and picked her up and buried her next to my paternal grandmother. Flash forward and it's after her funeral (to which I'm assuming I didn't attend; I had no memory of it). I remember riding in the car and just wailing in the backseat, looking across from me to where A should have been seated. We arrived at a family gathering that was at a park near the cemetery where my first born child lay. My dad kept reassuring me that I didn't have to be there; no one expected me to be out in public. I kept telling him that I HAD to do it. I HAD to be out, I HAD to be around others. I did, after all, have my second born daughter still depending on her mother. I remember holding C, sitting at the grave where A was buried, just sobbing.

Then, back in real life, my husband opened the bedroom door and I smelled bacon.

As I woke from my dream, this confused stupor ran over me. I hadn't seen A that morning before she left for school, so I was feeling super disconnected from her. I had a range of emotions and felt like picking her up from school right away. I resisted this urge; I knew she was fine. But this dream just reminded me that I am too hard on her. I expect too much and I get too frustrated too easily. She deserves more of a mother from me. I have to stop being Erin and starting being A's Mom. I don't plan on losing myself, but I've got to be more for her. I have to remember to let her be silly and weird. When she does something that makes me cringe my nose, I have to remember that she's only seven. She will learn from her experiences and become her own person. I still have to raise her. I still have to punish her and reprimand her. But I don't have to do it with a vengence. That isn't parenting.

She reminds me of everything I was as as child. I must not ruin her. She's amazing.




-Erin