It’s dark, 1230am, and  we are in a hotel, away from home. My daughter is sick. Initially cough and now high fever.. Honestly, she looks awful. She’s sleeping but I hear her fast breathing. Too many horrible memories of beautiful children with “just a cold” flash through my head. The dark forest trees lower their branches toward the earth, darkening my hotel room, allowing in the menacing thoughts. Yes… I do it. I grab my stethoscope. She has hardly any breath sounds on the right.. Fine on the left… Is she ok? The monsters begin running through my brain. Every terrible possible horrible outcome runs through my head. She’s fine. I get back in bed but the darkness of the forest has me. Anxiety. Fear. Guilt (she didn’t get a flu vaccine this year). 

The hallway reverberates with a man screaming. He yells and hollers in an incomprehensible language. The pitch rises and falls like  a baptist preacher. This hotel is loud. Knocking on the hallway doors, doors opening and closing and the distant rhythmic echoing of the crazy man yelling. My other kids are 2 doors down with their au pair. Are they safe? Did they lock the door? I’m out of control. I recognize the beasts. They are useless. They are not my friends. 

They pop up at the oddest times… Well, always in the dark of night… But, out of the blue. 

I refuse to be afraid of the dark.

When I operate, and am sewing two pieces of an infant’s bowel together, if there is even the slightest gap, I add a “sleeper stitch”. The term taught to me by one of my favorite mentors – the stitch that lets you sleep at night. Without it, that minuscule, insignificant gap becomes a vast chasm. Without it, the monsters creep in promising the baby a death by my incompetence. 

Anxiety, fear, guilt. Useless.

I know I’m good at my job.

The monsters waltz in reminding me of socially awkward moments from a decade ago…. A week ago… The difficulties of my divorce. My kids.. their health, their education…. What’s going to happen? My son starting to drive EVEN THOUGH HE DOESNT TURN 15 UNTIL APRIL!

Really!!! REALLY! That’s the best you little beasts can do?! Idiots!

Get out of my head.

I’m back in the hotel room. In the dark. I can cast them away. You can too. They are useless, destructive. I disempower them. I don’t believe. 

The dark trees lift. I take deep breaths blowing their leaves into the air. The monsters back away into the woods. I can hear her breathing quietly. She’s sick, but ok.

We all have our own monsters… We make them. Some produce them in mass quantities allowing them to ruckus around in their heads day and night. We allow them. They feed on our smallest fears- our insecurities… Anything that promises to provoke the the maximum anxiety and guilt. Truly our 2 most useless emotions. Fear may be in many ways protective… if controlled, but anxiety and guilt don’t serve us well. 

In the moment,breathe them away, and the next day…in the clarity of light, free from the monsters, go for a run or a walk or a swim or yoga and work through the issue. Let it come up, work it out and send it away. 

 What will be, will be and make the absolute best of it.

Tame the monsters.