I am dreaming again
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A few weeks ago, I woke up in the morning. Something felt wrong, or at least weird. It was the first time my own body and brain had awoken me, rather than the sound of baby crying/screaming/chattering/wailing. I lay there in bed for a minute, feeling half disoriented and half fantastic. Fantastic because I had…actually rested!
As Julius has started to sleep through the night more and more often – knock on all the wood – something wild has happened. I’ve started to dream again.
My body, at least, needs sustained sleep to be able to formulate dreams. The baby waking up at 10 PM and midnight and 4 AM meant I was always in some fugue state of half sleep, where everything hurt from exhaustion and my brain felt like it was stuffed with cotton balls. Slowly, Julius has started to sleep better. Up just a few times, then just once, and now these days, mercifully, hardly at all. Praise to the baby sleep gods.
When I wake up, I can now spend a moment checking in with myself. Sometimes, dreaming Hannah has just been moving big boxes into the house where I lived in college, or running late to a flight, or rushing to take a test I haven’t studied for (classic anxiety dream!). I often remember some sort of vague feeling or image rather than a specific narrative of what has unfolded in dreamland.
I’ve never been great at remembering my dreams. I had a recurring dream before I got married where I had forgotten to break up with various ex-boyfriends. This was stressful on two levels: 1. I had to break up with them ASAP. 2. Tony was going to be mad at me. Waking up was a relief.
Next week, Julius turns one which feels like such a huge milestone. He is graduating from babyhood to toddlerhood.
I am graduating, too. From the fog of newborn life, from just trying to get through the day, to this next chapter.
What will this next chapter hold?
I am trying to dream again.
I am going to dream again.
Not just uneasy anxiety dreams, although those are probably here to stay. Big life dreams. Things I want to do: travel and explore. Write more books. Be someone who sends thank you cards. Cook meals that aren’t sheet pan dinners. Learn. I even started a jigsaw puzzle!
Garden? Write fiction?
I’m think about women are raised to keep dreams and ambitions small, and how I don’t want that to be me.
Here I am recording a video about high chairs, of all things. Making more videos is a dream that is becoming a reality.
And here is Julius scaling his high chair. I think we’re ready for the booster seat.
Anyway, dreams can be terrifying because they bring up FEAR - what if I will never do this thing? What if I do and it’s not all that dreamy after all?
But they’re part of being a (less overwhelmed and exhausted) human, and they’re a part I am going to embrace, at least for now.
Dream big, my friends.
Until next time,
Hannah