For those of you who don’t know, I’m a runner. Okay, not now, but I used to be. I started running when I was in high school and by the time I got to college I was running three miles a day. There was even a time when my roommate Ginny and I would get up at five in the morning in negative forty degree Rexburg weather complete with two feet of unshoveled snow just so we could go running before my seven o’clock College Algebra class. I love running. I love putting on my headphones and blasting my head full of loud thumping music. I love the sweat, the pain, the rythmn, and the runner’s high. I never got skinny as a runner, sort of like I never get skinny when I nurse babies, even though everything I read says I should. Guess I’m much too good at eating. But. . . I always loved to run. And the truth is, I miss it terribly. I dream of the day when I can run again and the strange sense of freedom it gives me.
Why am I telling you this? Well, not too long after I gave birth to Hunter I started having this recurring dream, about once or twice a week for like a year. In the dream I’d get all ready to go running but soon after I’d set off on my run I wouldn’t be able to lift my feet. It was like I had two cinder blocks attached to my feet and try as I may, I couldn’t run. I still remember waking up after those dreams and the terrible feeling of being weighed down and trapped. My analysis: I was feeling trapped in my new role as a mother and a bit trapped, unable to do all the things I could prior to his birth. Hunter, basically, was weighing me down.
Then, right after I had Noah I started having a different recurring dream. Again, once or twice a week for about a year. This time, I would stuff wads and wads of bubble gum into my mouth until I finally got to the point where I’d start choking on the gigantic wad of gum in my mouth and start to suffocate. I thought the dream after Hunter was bad. . . this one was terrifying. My analysis: Basically I had bitten off more than I could chew, having two kids and all, and I didn’t feel like I could handle all the responsibilities involved.
I’m relieved to say that after I had Denver and Caleb, there were no recurring dreams. I suppose as a parent you come to a point where having kids isn’t so scary and you learn to deal with whatever the kids dish out, as well as juggle all the other things you need and want to do. Unfortunately, with the birth of the twins, I’ve started having another recurring dream and I’m finding it most disturbing. Basically, Mark keeps totally dissing me for another woman. The woman varies with each dream, but the circumstances are always the same–I desperately need him and want him but it’s very clear he wants to be somewhere else with someone else. My analysis: I’m definitely feeling insecure about myself right now. You would be too if your belly had been stretched beyond capacity and was now a bunch of saggy, baggy stretch-marked elephant flab drooping over a most disgusting eight inch scar and your boobs were bigger than most porn stars and you were told you can’t exercise or have sex for six weeks and you had a bottomless pit for a stomach and you were constantly stuffing your face with food in a desperate attempt to fill the void and everytime you sit down with your significant other you fall asleep and start drooling uncontrollably on his lap (and when you do manage to stay awake you have nothing intelligent to say besides what Caleb’s poop looked like today and how ugly you feel) and then when you do wake up to feed the baby(ies) you rant and rave about stupid, silly things because you are so dang tired, nursing two babies is the last thing you feel like doing in the middle of the night. And I suppose I do have this underlying fear that Mark really does want to be somewhere else right now. But nothing in Mark’s behavior has implied that at all so it’s weird that I should feel so worried.
So. . . what’s your analysis? I honestly think I started losing brain cells with the birth of Hunter and that was just the beginning of the long road to insanity. Now I’m just thinking I’ve almost reached my destination. . . the looney bin.
