“But what if we both die and he never sees us again? He’s not going to understand what happened and he’s going to be so sad.”
That’s me, going through the what-ifs with my husband as I mentally prepare for leaving my 2 year old behind on our upcoming (and random) trip to Hawaii. I should mention that I’ve never been anxiety prone, especially when it comes to flying, but here I am, soiled in hypothetical morbidity as my mind runs through all the things I must do to prepare for the unpreparable: my death.
And then I start crying. Ugly, uncontrollable, baseless crying. I try to talk myself down: people fly all the time; whatever happens is going to happen regardless; if I’m meant to die and orphan my child then that’s just how it was supposed to be. More tears. All I see are flashing headlines announcing my demise through a flight number, running across CNN, as people that knew me offer a few words of shock while recalling that I was 5 months pregnant. Wait a minute…I see what’s going on.
I’m fucking pregnant! And these hormones are a real piece of work, let me tell ya. “Do you want to stay home?” My husband asks in response to my anxiety. Somehow, even though the possibility of dying during my trip to Hawaii seems very real and threatening, I can’t allow it to take over...completely. “Absolutely not! But YOU HAVE to survive.” I demand, hormones and all.
I begin calibrating his survival skills. I rank him quite high. If anyone survives, it’s definitely going to be him, I tell myself. “Just remember, don’t drink the sea water, it will dehydrate you and kill you. No matter what!” I instruct him, confident that he’ll somehow manage to stay afloat in an emergency raft when the airplane dives into the Pacific, hypothetically of course. And then I fall asleep.
And as ridiculous as it is, and as nutso as it sounds to regular hormone regulated folk, I still feel obliged to leave a letter to Dylan in a sealed envelope on my fridge, along with a list of all my account passwords so that he has access to my digital footprint should I never return from my tropical vacation. Not just because I love him, but because pregnancy is a real motherfucker and right now she's driving this bus all the way to crazy town, Xanax free. And mommy loves you DingDing.
