I Have This Nightmare All The Time & Now I'm (Kinda) Gonna Have to Live It

Tomorrow, we close on the Professor House.

Finally, right?

If I could completely detach my brain from my body from now until then, I would happily do that. 

Cause I'm about to have to live through my worst recurring nightmare. Kind of. Or at least my brain keeps reminding me of it.

I blogged about it before, but I'll give you a lil recap just in case you might be too lazy to click that link and read and whole other blog on top of this one. 

I get it, it's an investment. 

So the dream is basically this:

I've been staying in the same hotel room for at least a month. (check)

There is stuff all willy nilly all over the hotel room. (check)

It is time to check out. (almost check - we're 'moving out' Tuesday)

I cannot get anything accomplished. It's like the mess keeps compounding and my time keeps dwindling. (not check)

Now, I know this dream isn't gonna come true this week, because this isn't the hotel room I dream about. That one is long and connected to another room where people are sleeping (but the door is open).

I still have to keep reminding my brain to calm down, though. 

And when I do that, it goes through all the things that give me mega panic about moving. 

When my dad died, my mom (understandably) wanted to get out of the house as quickly as possible, with as little work on her part as possible. 

So she auctioned off everything. All the things. 

We lived in a small town so getting rid of our entire lives in this way felt very intrusive. Because of my SDAM (Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory) I honestly don't remember much of the auction day except feelings. My body can take me right back to how I felt sitting in our backyard watching the people I went to school with and their families take our lives away piece by piece. 

And I also remember this - 

I remember someone who was there to "support us during this trying time" absolutely giving me the business because I wasn't "grieving correctly". 

It was mean (but "came from a place of love"), it was loud, it was embarrassing, and it was unnecessary. 

And I couldn't get away from it. I was forced to sit there in a circle of white plastic chairs and just take it. And literally no one defended me. 

The other moving out/in thing that sticks out in my head is this story that happened the day I signed the lease on my post-divorce rental. 

I don't think I have told anyone this story, because it just seems so weird that I can't believe it even happened. 

Plus, I was embarrassed about it for some reason. 

So, needless to say, when I got divorced, it was not amicable. But I did live in the same house as my ex-hubby until the day D & I moved into our own place. 

The morning I was scheduled to sign the lease,  my ex had already left for work, so I was alone in the house. 

When I went to get into my car to drive to new place to sign the lease, well, my car interior wasn't normal. 

I guess I should also mention this (which I had forgotten about until I started writing this) - in the time between me finding a new place and signing the lease, a brick was thrown threw the sliding glass door in the back of the 'new' house. (And fixed before we moved in.)

No idea who did it, but there was nothing in the house to steal when it happened, so I didn't think too much about it. They fixed the glass and I moved on with the lease.

Look, there weren't a lot of choices to keep D in her school district at that time (2 two be exact) so I didn't have time nor brain capacity to find something else. 

Okay, so back to that car interior the morning I was to sign the lease. 

When I opened the door to my car that morning...

...and had sat down...

(you'll understand why that's important in a moment)

...literally every surface was covered with a very fine powder. Baby powder, I thought based on the overwhelming smell.

Now, I'm not talking, like, dust or a little bit of a spill. 

I mean at least two centimeters of powder covering every single thing in my car. 

E V E R Y T H I N G. 

Including whatever trash had accumulated. 

Luckily, my brain forces me to be almost painfully early for every appointment, so I had some time to do damage control, including changing my outfit. 

I didn't know what had happened inside my car that morning and honestly, I still am not 100% sure. 

My brain, however, told me not to use any of the cleaning supplies in the house, though, because I didn't want my ex to know I had any trouble at all that morning. 

Regardless if it was caused by him or not. 

But I mean, it kind of had to be? Like, the only other thing my brain could come up with was my airbag randomly deployed and the powder was somehow related? But there wasn't a bag of air, empty or otherwise, to be found. 

Whatever it was, I changed my outfit, grabbed a couple towels to set on the seat and then swung by a 7Eleven on the way to my lease signing, where I bought a roll of paper towels and a bottle of windex (the only cleaning supplies they had).

I signed the lease, got the keys to the new place and started cleaning out the car to the best of my ability. 

1. Why the fuck did my brain convince me to hide this? 

2. What was whoever did this trying to accomplish?

I don't think about this incident very often, but when I do, these are the two questions that keep popping up. 

So with the moving and unpacking we're doing this coming week, my brain is on high alert to protect me. Except part of the problem is - it doesn't need to protect me near as much as it used to. 

It's hard to know when to listen to it so that I'm safe and when it's holding onto old issues that don't exist anymore. Like, sometimes my brain pre-emptively punishes people (including myself) that do not need it, nor do they deserve it. Because it's trying to protect me.

So, I'm just gonna take my time and be gentle with myself. We have a little leeway with the PODS Pod, so we don't even have to do that all in one day. 

If I feel myself getting swirly in the head, I'll take some time and try to figure out if it is something that is truly an issue or if my brain's just being an overprotective bitch again. 

Previously, I would just power through without any regard to myself or my feelings and been miserable for weeks after. That did me more harm than good in the long run. 

I used to think I was strong for powering through and putting on a brave face, 

Now, I think I'm brave for looking out for myself first - and speaking up when I need to. 

That last part is still hard AF, though