Dreams.

I keep having dreams about my parents. I dream that they aren't dead, that they're here. I dream that they know my son. I hate these dreams because they remind me even when I sleep of what I will never have. They irritate me by showing me what I avoid looking at when I'm awake.

These dreams are fuckers.

I've been feeling so incredibly lucky lately, so blessed. I've been busy and overwhelmed and in so far over my head that sometimes it feels like I'll never be able to breathe again, (and then I remember that I'm going back to work in a week and a half, and I realize that I don't know what stress IS yet, and I start to hyperventilate for real) but when all of that passes- and it does pass- I'm left with a feeling of such fortune that it stuns me. I've never done anything in my life to deserve any of this. I don't deserve to be this kind of happy. It is a solid thing, a lasting thing. It sits beneath all of the confusion and fear and panic of new parenthood, and patiently it waits. It abides.

Eventually, I slow down and take a moment to look at this person that I had a hand in making, and I forget to feel guilty that his stomach is a messed up ball of FAIL, and that sleep is nothing more than a photograph of a dream about a distant memory that someone else had forever ago, and I will never have a chance at again ever because mah bebeh, he does not snooze... And it's then when I am quiet that I feel this warm, sweet thing that can only be perfect happiness.

But it seems as though a part of me cannot manage to be content. It roots through, digging down to a wound that I wish would just scab over and scar, ripping it open again and again.

I'm too young to be an orphan. A thousand times a day, I need my mother. I'm not sure if you've heard, but somehow there must have been a mix up in the paperwork because, holy shit, they let me walk out of a hospital- where people were trained to keep infants alive, and were probably completely capable of doing so- with a newborn. A tiny little thing that depends on me.

Two quick notes about parenthood:
1. Wow. Wow, huh? I mean, WOW. Amazing, humbling, beautiful. Amiright?
2. I miss alcohol and cigarettes. LIKE BAD. Because this? Is fucking stressful. See that part up there where I said something about a tiny thing depending on me? Yeah. That = Stress.

I miss my mother. I keen for her. More times than I can count since my son has been born, I've wept for wanting her. I need her to hug me and tell me it's going to be okay, that my son is going to be okay, that I'm not fucking everything up. I need to hear her because I know I would believe her. I know I would feel better, that I wouldn't feel so terrified and lost with her here to steady me.

I miss my father, too, but less because I need him and more because he would have been so proud of his grandson. He loved babies and had wanted grandchildren for a long time (..From what I hear. My sister was the one to inform me of that - he wanted HER to have children, not me, for reasons I've touched on here before. But beggars, choosers, blah. Specifics aren't important, right? It's what I tell myself.) When I think of my father, there is still a lot of anger, but I do miss him. I miss them both.

And so I dream of them. I dream that they hold my son, that they can see him smile and hear him do his best impression of a baby dinosaur. (I'm no expert, but in my humble opinion, it is an impressive audio likeness. It's positively primal.) I dream that we are together. I dream that I'm not alone.

I dream of the only thing I can't have when I'm awake, the only thing I have left to want, and I ache.