The Tooth Fairy

 

Throughout my life, I have had very vivid dreams (some would call them psychedelic).  The only time they went away was when I was drugged into a stupor and too sick to have an internal life. 

Now,  that I  am not too drugged; I am still kinda sick but at least my dreams are back. 

Last night I had one that is reoccuring but I have not had it for some time.  Let me wander off here and give some background: 

 I believe very strongly that our subconscious throws things we are having trouble with up at us during the hours we are asleep, as dreams, and if we can pick them apart, there is something to be discovered about our reality: good or bad or indifferent. 

The bad/scary dreams that reoccur, at least for me, do not go away until I figure them out and do something about whatever it is I am supposed to be learning from them, in my day to day life. 

Does this sound complicated? Strange?  Woo Woo? 

Welcome to my husband’s life:)

If I could draw or even put clip art into my essays this is where I would put in a picture of a very scary looking version of a Grimm’s fairy tale type elf, maybe like Rumplestiltskin, and just leave him here on the page, between the paragraphs. 

(Imagine a scary elf man with fairy wings here.  He is wearing a too tight t-shirt over a hairy paunchy belly that says, “I’m the effing tooth fairy. Get over it, kids.”  He has yellow, sharp teeth.)

Ok, back to the main event here: 

The dream is always similar and last night it went like this…

I wake up one morning and notice one of my front teeth has fallen out.  I find it on the bed next to me. This makes me panic and call for my mom.  After I show her what has happened, I realized that a bunch more teeth on the bottom are also  loose and that several spots in my mouth hurt like hell.  

My mom starts thinking aloud (because that is how she thinks)  about which dentist to take me to. I grew up next door to our local dentist’s mom and for years and years I babysat his kids and he was my dentist. (This part is real.) 

For some reason I told my mom I didn’t think David (our dentist friend) could help me.  So mom, who I suddenly, in the ways of the dreaming, realized is dead, told me we would go to someone good in San Antonio.  We lived a bit outside the city in the hill country. 

After I remembered she is dead, and I am a damned adult, I started to lose more teeth and I felt really hopeless and depressed. 

So, next I decided to tell my husband, Stan, that I had a sort of emergency. 

Only then, (dreams are so damned weird) did I realize we were still living in New Jersey. Stan said I probably needed oral surgery and to go to one of the better hospitals and he would meet me later.  

Somehow my mom got ressurected, (She was very much alive and often with us in New Jersey) and she got all freaked out because we didn’t know which hospital was best there.  

I was freaking out too.  The longer we debated, the  more my teeth fell out. I could hardly talk without it being obvious and I was scared to death to open my mouth because more of them might just fall on the floor. 

Then, just as in the other hundreds of times I have had the tooth dream, I awoke or my brain overloaded, I don’t know.  All I know is that the issue was never solved. 

I woke up and ran my tongue around my mouth feeling for my teeth. 

They were all there. 

So, what does this stupid, anxiety causing, sweat through the sheets, dream have to do with my life? 

I think I know but I am not really happy about it.  

#1. I have Mommy issues:)   Yeah. No excrement, Sherlock!  I miss my parents and I miss my aunt and I miss being their baby.  I don’t like adulting without a safety net. For years they were not a safety net in the financial way.  Actually, it was the other way around. But, in the emotional sense, I was always welcome to call and talk about ANYTHING.  I got huge doses of nonjudgmental love from them all of my life, well, certainly from mom and dad, and I miss that. 

My job now is to do that for my children.  Again, back to the adulting thing. Damn. I have been doing it for a long, long time.  I am, after all, middle aged. But, I never felt really old until I was middle aged, sick, and had no parents: THAT JUST BLOWS. 

 

#2. I am responsible for part of the budget at home and I have always been more than ok with that.  I prefer to work. However, in 2011 I became so effing sick I had to go on disability. Well, guess what? Disability isn’t enough money to really make a difference.  I now have my second child in college. I also have a crap ton of medical debt and debt from child #1’s undergraduate degree. My husband earns a really great living. He is amazing and he brings home a great deal of bacon.  However, even he cannot handle all that has happened to us over the years. It is too much. So, I am now working a mere 15 hours a week as a writing tutor for the local community college. It is frustrating as hell. 

I am overqualified and ridiculously stupid with the IT I am supposed to keep learning.  It makes me want to scream.  

#3. Here is the real problem and the reason my teeth are metaphorically falling out in my dreams. 

I can’t hack it. I am tired and worn to a frazzle.  I have responsibilities at home. I am learning to let them go but for now I still have them.  We have four pets. We have a niece at home that I have been tutoring through her law school application process for months.  We have kiddos that call mom every day (which I am great with). And, I still have doctor appointments and procedures, even though I am doing better. 

It all feels like too much.  

I am barely able to pick up my feet on many days.  I dread the days I have to go to work. It isn’t so much the work as the getting up and getting there and getting home and being wiped out.  It eats my entire day and many days I barely make it. 

But, I have no choice just now.  

 

I am trying, with all the energy I can spare; to find a way to work on my own schedule. 

I have learned over the last year about the law school application process.  This is what I have been coaching my niece through. I am meeting with a friend of hers who has been through the process and has UT connections, next week.  Maybe I can find a few clients. These people pay a lot of money to folks for help and I can do the work… well. 

 

So, maybe something can happen there… I don’t know.  

 

I want to get a book published.  

I have lots and lots of ideas and plans but they go nowhere when I am operating at a low level….

What do I do about it?  

Do I just let my  teeth fall out? 

Do I see the dentist? 

Who is “the dentist?” 

G…d? 

Me? 

Do I even have any idea? 

 

 I don’t really know.  I just know that writing this down has forced me to be honest in ways I have been afraid to be honest.  

 

Now I am afraid to post it to my blog.  

 

Who else has these issues and is chronically ill/tired/over cooked? 

 

Any suggestions? 

 

Self help group? 

 

Primal whine? 

I dunno. 

I just hope I quit having the damned dream.