Sweet Dreams

In addition to having become a low-carb, low salt, high veg, non-beer drinking, running, swimming brideaholic, I’ve started to have ‘troubled sleep.’ Recently, I have been waking in the wee hours terrified that one or either of us won’t make it to the wedding. This is more than a little worrying as the “joyful day” is still months away.

The nightmare scenarios vary: run down by renegade buses; savaged by random, rogue bears; abducted by malevolent aliens, you name it. Sometimes, I’m not able to wake myself out of the dream, and the D.E.B. has to take hold of me, and comfort me back to reality, as I lay flailing about slaying dragons, sharks or Lord Voldemort.

I realize that the source of this angst is an anxiety driven by the fact that I am utterly afraid of being “too happy.” That somehow being “too happy” or too much in love, will inevitably trigger a negative and adverse response in the universe to redress the cosmic balance. (I really need more Vitamin B, or maybe even a beer.  Or two.)

Thankfully, I know that I am not alone in this. It is good to have others with whom I can share this experience and anxiety. A new and wonderful friend of mine, Elizabeth, a fellow Yankette in the UK, is getting married in less than two weeks. Dynamo that she is, she has planned a simple, elegant soiree in under two months. Diva or what?

It was such a comfort to be able to put in a tearful call to her recently with an irrational medical concern (brain tumor resulting from standing too close to the microwave?), and have her reduce my fears to giggles. Hypochondriacs of the world, unite! Yes, I am the girl to whom many an exasperated doctors has mused impatiently: “Sometimes, a cold is just a cold.”

So, thanks to Elizabeth’s good counsel and a chat with the D.E.B., who confided that he, too, was feeling a touch of the “Don’t Be Too Happy” anxiety (though he has not taken it into his dreams) I am feeling and sleeping much better. And my dreams have improved.

The other morning, the D.E.B. informed me that I called out in my sleep (again). Embarrassed, I apologized. “Oh, no, no, sweetheart,” he said. “This time was a good one. You were laughing. And then you shouted ‘I will!’”  Hmm…a sweet dream indeed.

(Note: The Church of England wedding ceremony has the couples declaring ‘I will’ when taking vows, not ‘I do.”)