“They look like white elephants,” she said.

“I’ve never seen one,” the man drank his beer.

“No, you wouldn’t have.”

“I might have,” the man said. “Just because you say I wouldn’t have doesn’t prove anything.”

- Hills Like White Elephants, Ernest Hemingway

It starts with the nightmares.

Night after night, I’m stranded in airports I’ve never visited – some exotic, some rural – malls I’ve never seen, always looking for someone who, in a dream-like way, I know is looking for me, too. A particular someone – someone who I’ve never met, but someone who, I chase night after night. I have a feeling I’d know him if I saw him, but really, that could be a lie.

It feels silly, to admit that I spend my dream time, not eating Marshmallow Fluff, but looking for a particular person. I’d much rather be saving the world while I sleep than sorting through the faceless masses at fictional airports.

Once the dreams begin, sleeping becomes fitful, if not impossible.

I’ve not won any sleeping awards since I got my thyroid regulated (I HAVE A GLANDULAR PROBLEM), but during these patches, it becomes nearly impossible. When I sleep, I run, I chase, I wake myself weeping into my pillow or moaning in sadness. By 9AM, all hope of rest gone, I slog my soggy ass out of bed and pretend that I remember what it’s like to sleep.

I’m functional for a few weeks like this, groggy, with slowed reflexes, but, with my rate of unintentional self-injury, no one notices.

It’s only after a few weeks, months, I don’t know how long, that I start to crack. The anxiety becomes too much. Things I would’ve normally found hilarious – my neighbors tree, for example, which looks like it’s growing a full set of knockers – don’t even elicit the barest of smiles.

I want so desperately to reach out, to connect with someone; anyone, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t bring myself to admit that it’s okay to be weak – that I’m allowed to not understand my feelings. It’s then that the voices of those who I have once loved echo through my head and I begin to doubt. Everything. Myself. My ability to function in every day society.

The echos of things once-said flit through my mind. “I can’t handle your problems right now,” my ghost-husband says. “You’re a liar,” my ghost-brother says. “Take down that story about the rape or I’ll take action,” my ghost ex threatens.

My world becomes smaller, ever smaller, as the PTSD rears it’s head. And this time, like the others, it leaves me gasping for air, for straws, for any reason as to why there’s a 9,827 pound white elephant on my chest when the rest of the world seems to be breathing air like it’s no big deal.

I wonder what is so fundamentally fucked inside my head that I can’t manage to beat this PTSD: my daughter lived. I have countless friends who’d gnaw off a couple of legs to say the same thing. So why am I so fucked? Why does rubbing my hand along the plastic implant inside her skull make me break out in a cold sweat? She squeals and laughs runs and plays and kicks her brothers with wild abandon, while I am trapped on the couch, my windpipe unable to properly move air into my lungs.

And those words, those words like white elephants, trapped in my lungs, they remain unspoken.

Friday night, well ensconced in our Friday Night Ritual (Dinner at Chili’s with Amelia and The Guy On My Couch, followed by a trip to The Target Store, which, of course, is a sacrosanct tradition), she marched around the store, proudly showing off her pink Starbucks Cake Pop.

No matter how full of my sour cream and cheese she is, she insists upon a Cake Pop that she eventually feeds to The Guy on the Couch. Pure happiness for a buck-fifty.

Can’t beat it.

She’d found herself a bright green sparkly hat which she proudly wore during the times that she hadn’t placed it upon the head of The Guy on the Couch – they’d been playing some game with it while I grabbed food for the week.

Eventually we wound our way, just as we always do, to the Legos. Carefully, she had to inspect each box to find the one that she wanted. She vacillated between a lighthouse and a dinosaur but eventually ended up choosing a teeny red speedboat. A good, solid careful choice.

Soon – too soon for me – it was time to go home. Lovingly, she’d placed the clearance Hello Kitty Backpack onto her back, marching toward the checkout with a bounce and a wiggle.

“Lookit my Pack-Pack, Mama! It’s HELLO KITTY.” She turned and swiveled around so that I could admire it as we stood there unloading the cart.

“It’s beautiful, Mimi-Girl,” I replied, just as I had the last twelve times she’d showed it off to me.

“Can I show Dada?” She asked coyly, fluttering her eyelashes at me. “He home from work yet?”

“Yes, Mimi,” I replied. “I just talked to him – we’re going to grab him some dinner to take home to him.”

“Can he put me to bed?” She asked for the fifty-fifth time that night.

“Yes, Baby, he can put you to bed,” I replied for the fifty-fifth time.

“Mama, we’re at sixteen,” she pointed at the check-out lane. “Dere’s five-teen and seventeen,” she carefully showed me. “Why?”

“You chose it, Mimi,” The Guy on my Couch who is endlessly patient with her questions. She tilted her head up to him coyly, “You like my Pack-Pack, Big Ben?”

“It’s beautiful, Mimi,” he replied for the thirty-eleventy-niner time.

She spun and twirled in front of the mirror next to her, admiring her Pack-Pack. “I love you, Hello Kitty Pack-Pack.” I giggled at her pronunciation of the word, “Backpack.”

Eventually she got tired of preening in front of the makeshift mirror and turned to the lady in line in front of us, who had been casually watching my daughter twirl and whirl.

“You like my Hello Kitty Pack-Pack?” Amelia asked.

“Yes, yes I do,” she smiled down at my beaming daughter.

She turned to me and spoke, “How old is she?”

“Just turned three,” I replied proudly.

“Man, she’s such a chatterbox. I can’t believe she talks so much! My child is about her age and she doesn’t speak quite so well.”

I beamed, ear-to-fucking-ear.

If she only knew.

If she only knew.

I sat there in the lobby of the surgical waiting room, reading the kind words my Pranksters sent me that morning – feeling almost as though they were right there, beside me, as I waited. Would she live? Would she die?

No one knew. And those closest to me knew better than to say, “it’ll be okay.” Because a) it’s a bullshit statement and 2) they didn’t know any more than I did whether or not that would be the case.

A little stoned, perhaps, on Ativan, I began to rummage through the bag I’d packed. I didn’t know what one was supposed to pack in times like these – a word search, my phone charger, my breast pump, my own tissues (my face was already torn up from the hospital-grade tissues).

That’s what I brought.

It was there, as I pecked out a quick tweet on my i(can’tfucking)Phone, “She’s back in surgery now.” As I went to put my phone away, she showed up.

It was the surgical assistant, completely suited up in surgical gear. If I’d had more than half a second to panic, I’d have begun – I’d just given up my precious daughter, signing documents allowing the neurosurgeon to cut open her brain, take out some spare bits, then put her back together with a skull implant. The surgery was supposed to be 6-9 hours long – seeing her like that so soon after we’d kissed our girl goodbye, that should have been scary.

She carried a bag with her – a bio-hazard, which she held in front of her, obviously trying to give it to me.

The confusion set in as the tears (again) poured from my eyes: was this a bit of my daughter?

She spoke, “We gave her a haircut. I wanted you to have this for her baby book.”

I took it, turning it over in my hand, as I wondered if it was the last bit of my daughter I’d hold, as she strode back into the OR where my daughter was unconsciously waiting.

Not knowing what else to do, I shoved it into my hospital bag.

I’ve never taken it out. In fact, I’ve never touched that bag. It sits in my closet, still full of whatever I’d packed, while horrified, panicked that I’d been offering my daughter up for slaughter.

A lifetime later, my daughter wiggles and bounces her way into the room, chock full of giggles and smiles, playing a game with her Lego guys, then “cooking” me a breakfast out of her play food.

Why yes I want green beans with my eggs, Mimi, how kind of you to offer.

I see it.

Her hair.

The wispy locks of baby hair are finally growing out, her big girl hair filling in underneath. The new curls are thick underneath it all, giving her a properly impish look.

But the baby hair, it looks…well…weird. It’s clearly time to cut it off.

So I grab a pair of scissors, beg The Guy On My Couch, Who Happens To Be Sitting ON The Couch, to help me out with her – just keep her occupied, I ask. This isn’t the sort of haircut I give the boys – I’m just lopping off the long bits as she chats with The Guy On My Couch.

He too, I learn as I listen to them talk, would love some fake green beans with his pretend eggs.

Soon, I have a pile of longer blondish hairs. Not willing to part with those memories just yet, I find a baggie and carefully place those long strands inside, where they will, one day, be put into her baby book along with her first haircut.

And as she bops and whirls away, haircut over, she looks over her shoulder and positively beams at me, her old eyes somehow comprehending that this five minute stretch on the couch was, for some reason unbeknownst to her, very big deal.

Her curls shimmering, catching the light just-so, giving her the appearance of having an actual halo, I am reminded; humbled, by how far we have come.

Both of us.