When I was 11, my grandfather had a brain aneurysm rupture. He was hospitalized for days before he died. The entire time he was in the hospital, I had a horrible dream each night that a masked man with a gun was threatening to shoot every person in my extended family. That dream was my adolescent brain’s way of dealing with the intense emotions surrounding the loss of a loved one. Eventually there was a night where I did not dream that dream.
When I was 26, I was stopped at a stop sign in a shopping center parking lot and a man on a bike rode right into the front of my car. Then he picked up that bike and threw it through the windshield of my car, came around to the driver’s side and began threatening me. Bystanders had to physically pull him away from me. Following that incident, I had intense, dark and really frightening dreams that were a byproduct of PTSD. Eventually there was a night where those dreams did not come.
Recently, I have been having dreams where my son is somehow not safe and as hard as I try I am not able to protect him from a threat (sometimes he has been taken away and I don’t know where he is, sometimes there is somebody trying to hurt him and I can’t get him to safety). These dreams are clearly a result of the fear I feel when I send him out into the world each day. Every morning, I take a deep breath, put on my brave face, send him out into the world, and then spend the rest of the day praying he makes it through without a panic attack or an anxiety fueled angry outburst. Some days are fine, some days are awful. There is no way of really knowing which way any day will go. So every night, I lay in bed and pray that the next day will be one of the good days, that the next dosage increase to his anxiety medication will be the one that works, that the next psychologist appointment will be the one where my son finally decides to talk about what he is feeling, that, that, that….
And eventually I sleep.
I know that eventually there will be a night when those dreams will not come. Eventually.
In the meantime, it may be time to hang a dream catcher in our room to help me hang onto the good dreams.
We're All A Little Broken 