That nightmare is back.
This time, it’s been altered to someone texting me that Lexi has broken something but the texter is interrupted and can’t finish the text.
So, I’m receiving the same text over and over.
Hey, just thought you should
know Lexi will probably be okay
but she’s broken her…
And the texter doesn’t finish…can’t finish? I’m not sure what the interruption is. Just:
Hey, just thought you should
know Lexi will probably be okay
but she’s broken her…
In my dream, I grab my phone and start to text back and it comes through again while I’m typing:
Hey, just thought you should
know Lexi will probably be okay
but she’s broken her…
Over and over and over until I wake up sick to my stomach, panicked, and grab my phone in real life to see if it really was just a dream. Confirm there’s no text….ahhhh…a brief flash of relief that it was just a bad dream.
Doze back off then:
Hey, just thought you should
know Lexi will probably be okay
but she’s broken her…
And repeat.
It’s bizarre how the body can’t tell the difference between nightmares and reality. My body responds as if it’s all happening, even after I wake up, check my phone again, and decide to just get up for the day because I can’t take feeling that fear again. But my body continues to react as if in crisis. It reacts as though my child is in danger, hurting somewhere in this world, and I’m helpless to do a damn thing about it.
Fuck, I can’t even text her just to say, hey baby girl.. thinking of you…you ok? to reassure my terrorized brain that she’s just fine.
Well, I could text her but that only validates my nightmare further because there will never be grace enough to reply to a frantic momma plagued by the worst things a mother can imagine.
So, I sit and send her love out into the universe..hoping she feels it, begging the void that she’s just peacefully, happily, sound asleep…safe, happy, and maybe, just maybe, just for a second in her sleep feels my heart wrapping its warm love and light around her, keeping her safe, making sure she feels all the love I never did. All the love I thought I showed her in her life, but apparently did it all wrong…hopefully, she feels it this way, now, even while she just sleeps…even if just for a brief moment in her subconscious. Feels the infinite strength and safe surrounded in my love.
But my body is not to be assuaged. It continues to act as though it’s in battle-fight or flight mode…only flight and fight are both impossible. So it stays trapped in gut-churning, knees shaking, hands trembling terror incapable of convincing itself it was just a nightmare.
And I think to myself, okay, this is hell, but at least it wasn’t the one where she’s being gang raped in the room next to me and I can hear her screaming, momma…momma…MOMMMMMAAAA… but I can’t get to her.
At least it wasn’t that one. Right?
Grace seeks sanctuary 