April 2014

The alarm went off. I reached groggily for my phone and slid the alarm screen to snooze. I must finish my tax return today, I thought. Then my arm and phone dropped heavily by my side, and I drifted off as if I had never left sleep.

I couldn’t find Demi. I searched all over the house, never questioning that I was back in the home of my first marriage. She wasn’t in her bedroom with the pastel pink, blue, and yellow curtains I had made her. She wasn’t in the living room, where her Teddy Ruxpin bear was laying on the carpet before the couch. I searched from morning until twilight all over that tiny house, even peering through the garage, but she was gone, vanished. My panic kept rising like bile in my throat. She was so little, just five years old, and night was falling. She couldn’t survive alone all night.

I went to the front door and finally opened it, thinking I’d go drive the neighborhood, and there she was, curled up on the front porch in front of the door, sound asleep. There were streaks of grimy tears running down her face. Her little hands were tucked under her chin, and I could see they were dirty and blood-stained, like she’d been scratching at something and tore her nails bloody. Something squeezed my heart painfully as I looked at that sweet, beautiful, clearly traumatized little girl. I turned my head slightly and saw the marks along the lower part of the front door. I suddenly imagined her, kneeling at the door, crying, screaming, calling for me and clawing and scratching to get back in; trying to claw her way in all day, finally giving up, finally realizing that no one was going to save her, not even her mother.

The alarm went off again, jarring me awake, but a part of me was still standing at the door in that nightmare, feeling the horror and guilt of recognizing that I had hurt my own child. The adrenaline pumped so hard that I wasn’t the least bit sleepy. My heart and breath were both going double-time.

It was just a nightmare. Demi had never been missing, I told myself, not ever. Not even for an hour, much less a whole day. She had never hurt herself by scratching a door. I knew logically that none of it had ever happened. So why did I hurt so much? I slid the alarm off and peered at the phone. 6:11 a.m. The whole dream took all of ten minutes.

Sighing, I flopped over onto my back and lay there, steadying my breathing. Demi was down the hall, 29 years old, and likely hitting the snooze on her own alarm clock. I have to get up, get ready for work, and take Daisy to school. But I didn’t move. I felt so heavy in heart and body. My skin was trapped in the clawing sheets, punishing me by pulling me down into the uncomfortable mattress. I could hear the water running in the bathroom beyond my bedroom door, but whoever was there couldn’t know that I was in trouble. I couldn’t shake this feeling that I had sinned against nature, that there was something inherently wrong with me, that I was a bad mother, bad employee, bad person and deserved to sink into that nightmare tangle of bedclothes and never wake up.

My face was wet. My girls were awake. I dug my fingernails into the mattress, silently fighting back, and pushed myself up into a sitting position. “Snap out of it,” I whispered fiercely. Gritting my teeth, I made myself look at my phone, and click the news app. Oscar Pistorius sobbed during his testimony that he didn’t mean to shoot his girlfriend. Russia was claiming it didn’t mean to invade Ukraine, that it wasn’t their fault. Good. My boss was not in the news today. That means it should be a slow day.

I stood up, grabbed my clothes, and headed for my own shower. I thought I should probably talk to someone about these difficult mornings, but I was ashamed to admit that it was hard for me to get out of bed for something so silly as a nightmare. I just have to do a better job of eating right and exercising. My nightmares were my own fault. Somebody in this world needs to step up and take responsibility.