That’s right, I got this posted on Thursday. Oh, and headsup! There will be a shiny new home for you to link up your GTT posts next week so keep your eyes peeled!

I don’t usually remember my dreams. When I sleep, I don’t know that I often get into a deep enough sleep to even have dreams.  I have always been a pretty light sleeper, waking multiple times throughout the night, needing to get up and out of bed each time to do something, anything, before going back to sleep else I’ll lay in bed awake for an hour or more. When I do dream, I rarely remember enough of the dream to tell about it.

But.

I daydream a lot. I mean, a lot. I will allow my mind to play out every scenario, over and over again. The scenario differs depending on my day. If I’m headed to the deli, I wonder what would happen if they forgot my order. What would I say? What would they say? What would I do?  I find that I have to be very careful about what I expose myself to during the course of my day, because anything could become the subject of my imagination’s wanderings.

Ever since the death of Madeline Spohr shook the blogging world, my blogging world, I have what I might call waking nightmares about my children. I go into Geeklet’s room to check on her during her nap. My hand shakes, my breath catches – what if she’s cold? Not breathing? Dead? What if I’ve lost her and I don’t even know it?

I let Cupcake watch a movie in her bedroom sometimes, with a snack. Goldfish and juice, usually. I worry. What if she chokes and I don’t hear her? She probably won’t choke on Goldfish, she’s nearly 3.5 years old. But I’m sure it’s happened. I’ve heard about toddlers choking to death on grapes, and now I can’ t look at them without panicking just a little bit. What if it happened to our family? What if we were the warning story that everyone read? What if ours was the sad, tragic ending that makes every mother hold her own more closely?

Usually, though, it’s just the mundane. What if the store doesn’t have what I’m looking for? What would I do if this road suddenly closed down, what route would I take to work?

I think this is my brain’s way of trying to prepare me for every possible outcome. I think this is my own twisted way of trying to be prepared, when I know that I really can’t be prepared for everything.

I can’t watch horror movies. I need to be careful about which blogs I read and what new stories I click through to. I read a news story – tragic, so tragic – about a mother with server postpartem depression. She had a psychotic break. She killed her child. She did unthinkable things to the body of her son. Worse? She had tried to get help – gone to the hospital, tried to get away from her child because she knew something was wrong. It could have been me, Catherine said, and it echoed in my head. Sometimes I can’t get that image out of my head. Sometimes I can’t keep my mind from going there. It could have been me, if I didn’t have a support system, if my depression was a little worse, if I’d been alone.

I try not to let it rule my life. I try not to tell anyone about it. I don’t think I’ve even told EvilEmu, honestly.

It’s part of why I freaked out the other day and couldn’t control the sobbing. It’s why I read Heather’s blog religiously but can’t bring myself to comment every time. It’s why I end up clicking through to memorial blogs and photography websites specializing in still-births.

I think some part of me truly believes that I can somehow prepare myself for disaster, but I know that I really can’t. None of us can.

So I’ll continue to go through my day. I’ll continue to let the What Ifs play out in my mind. I’ll try to direct my imagination towards something less devastating, like a trip to Wal-Mart or traffic signals. Or Maytag wars.

This week’s GTT is about dreams – what do you dream about? Go to Mommy Melee’s blog (last week!) to get the button code and sign the Linky and participate!