Last night I was up late, making my pre-travel to do list and to-doing some of it. I answered e-mail and saw a picture of a friend, now so pregnant that I did not recognize her at first in the photo. I made arrangements to see another friend (Missy), meet her husband, who (my mother reports) gazes at her with the same adoration with which Mark looks at me, and see her new baby, born after many years of trying to get pregnant. I wrote a blog post about driving with Pat and thought about our near-miss adventures on the road: accidentally driving the wrong way down a highway and hydroplaning on a dark, wet, tree lined road on a rainy night. I thought about flying, and speed, and how fast planes hurtle through the air.

With those elements in my head -- pregnancy, a familiar face now unrecognizable, a much wanted baby, a loving and devoted husband, car accidents, speed, death -- my mind devised a dream for me. In the dream, Missy is pregnant and dies with another high school friend in a car accident, speeding to get to a destination on time. Her husband finds the car wreck, but the bodies are so mangled and disfigured that he doesn't know her. He lost the wife that was the center of his life, the baby they were longing for, but he didn't know it yet, looking at blood and twisted metal.

I woke up in a panic. It was a sign. I shouldn't take the plane. Forget that it was a dream about someone who was not me dying in a car accident and not a plane crash, there was a blond in the car and they were going fast. It just meant I was going to die at some uncontrollable speed, rushing to get somewhere. It meant I would end up in a heap of twisted steaming metal, my body would be ripped apart and unrecognizable. (Can you tell that my rational mind does not work well after a nightmare at the time of day my brother refers to as "the butt crack of dawn?") I tried to breathe, to get back to sleep, but I couldn't. So, I got up knowing I had hit my own personal anxiety bottom.

I've been doing this addicty thing lately. I have been knowingly holding on to the anxiety about this trip, because the rush of excitement I am having about it is a high I don't want to let go of. I have been afraid of letting go of the anxiety, because I don't want to let go of the excitement. I haven't been doing yoga. I haven't been sitting in meditation. I haven't been doing these things even though I know that they will help, because I know they will help. But screw it, I'm done. The trip will be here soon enough, and it will be fabulous. If the excitement goes with the anxiety, so be it, but the anxiety must go. I'm going to yoga tonight. I am sitting in meditation. I will be present for this adventure, not high on adrenaline. I will sleep tonight, and it will be dreamless.