Two of my dear friends were suffering the anxiety that follows too many emergency room visits in too little time and one of them was describing a common scene in her home where something would hit the floor loudly and she would start running through the house screaming, which led to her kids laughing at her overreactions on a regular basis. She joked that she was suffering from some mild form of post traumatic stress disorder.
Yesterday my six-year-old daughter stayed home from school because she had a cold and then spent the rest of her day driving me into an absurd panic by making strange loud noises (NAAAAAY!) that sounded an awful lot like she was sticking her fingers in an electrical outlet as soon as I sat down to feed the baby. Later, while I made lunch, she started screaming, "I'm falling! I'm falling! AHHHH!" and I ran to discover her deep in imaginary play with her dolls safely on the floor of our back deck, not dangling from three, then two, then one finger from the deck boards, as I had imagined.
My mind plays tricks on me. It's probably neurologically the same reason why as soon as I take a shower I hear the baby crying and jump out of the shower dripping wet just to find him sleeping soundly where I left him. The crying is in fact some phantom ghost baby, conjured by the deep dark anxiety-ridden place in my brain where strange fears lay in waiting for me to take a moment's reprieve.
