Life has been stressful as of late. Work is giving me all sorts of palpitations, and my hubs has the world's worst sunburn. It sounds trivial, but that thing is making him miserable. There is stress at the office, and there is just as much at home.
Yesterday was the worst of it for me. I had anxiety like I haven't experienced since I tried to leave home to go to college. For the most part, I'm a pretty calm person, and I just deal with things as they happen. Not yesterday. I shut down entirely. I felt hollow while feeling like I might explode from there just being too much everything. UGH.
I did manage to fall asleep pretty quickly last night. I thought it was going to be a miserable sleepless night of miserable misery. It wasn't sleepless. If anything, it was something-full. Dreadful? Painful? OhmyeffingG-dcouldthishurtmoreful?
I don't know.
I had dreams. Weird, mean dreams.
I never got to meet any of my grandparents. Both grandfathers died before I was born, and my maternal grandmother died when I was 6 months old. My paternal grandmother actually died in 2006, but I never met her, and I don't think she even knew that I existed. My father's relationship with her was more than twisted, and she had severe dementia in her later years. I was always jealous of kids who had grandparents while being irritated that everyone assumed that my actual parents were my grandparents. I wanted more family. I wanted cousins who were also best friends. I wanted people who would spoil me just cause (even though my parents did a pretty good job of that) and provide the kind of guidance that goes beyond parents. I have always missed people who I never got to know.
There is a point to this, I assure you.
The dream that I can remember still brings tears to my eyes. It hurts me in the pit of my soul. I was running around a small town looking for my maternal grandfather. I guess that I had gotten wind that he had recently died. I was going in and out of stores trying to find him. The search wasn't the hard part because I knew he was already gone. The hard part was finding out that he had just died recently, but I had never gotten to know him. It turned my universe upside down to imagine that this person who had been idolized by my mother just forgot to tell us that he didn't die in 1981. I searched everywhere, and I could see him walking around in front of me, but I couldn't get to him. I wanted him so badly.
I still do.
There aren't words to describe how much I do.
I woke up this morning and knew that the dream was just a reflection of the frustration and agony of the day prior. I don't put a whole lot of stock in the meaning of dreams. I can usually figure out what was bothering me from the day before that would cause a nightmare.
That doesn't mean that it hasn't been on my mind all day. It doesn't mean that I haven't been trying to wrap my head around why a childhood longing for something that I just couldn't have has resurfaced and just stings a whole hell of a lot.
What it does mean is that I'm now realizing how much time I spend worrying about the time that my future children will have with the wonderful people who are their grandparents. Sometimes, I feel like it's all-consuming. I want my children to have what I had with them. I want them to know from personal experience that their grandparents are amazing, awesome, wonderful, crazy people who love them so, so much.
I need that. I need that for them.
Sigh. It's time to attempt bed again.
Even today, it's hip to be square, kids.
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