B.M.S.

If you dream it in a dream, it has to be true, right?  I sure hope not.  Last night, or maybe even very early this morning, I had a very sad dream.  In this dream, I was accused by an acquaintance of having B.M.S.  I awoke upset, unnerved, and trying to scrape up every ounce of denial I could find.  And in the end, when I look the nocturnal judgment square in the face, I find that it is probably true. 

This syndrome causes me to be forgetful, to decline friendly invitations, to feel a growing desire to become a hermit and even stop spending any time with my friends.  Other side effects include lack of sleep, inability to focus and concentrate, unusual amounts of irritation, sometimes leading to flashes of anger, and ‘the stare’.  This is the glazed over look that sometimes appears on my face.  I remember it so well on the face of my own mother.  She would just sit and stare straight through me sometimes.  And now, my children say the same thing – “WHAAAAAAT?”  As in What are you staring at me for??????

What, you may ask, could be causing such a wide variety of symptoms?  The sickness is one that has worsened during the month of October.  I believe it has been brought on by a new training that I needed to take.  This training has, in essence, locked me in my home office for an additional four hours per weekday as an internet based teacher attempted to come through my computer screen and headset and fill my head with all kinds of knowledge about systems, orders, customer courtesy, missing photo orders, how to fill a contact lens prescription, answering emails in a non-robotic manner, and how to walk an 80 year old man through the process of getting photos from his new digital camera into our computer system.  Whew.  It is really no wonder I am having so many side effects.

As I return to the memory of the dream, to the memory of the words said, the worst effect seems to be that I no longer have enough time for my friends.  I am crossing my fingers that as October ends, and the training ends with it, I will find the time, or the ability to overcome the dreaded B.M.S. and become friendly and alive again.  To again take time to be a good friend.  To communicate, laugh, and sometimes go to lunch with a friend.  

And most of all, to remember that my syndrome – Busy Mom Syndrome –  is one from which I can recover.  With a little help from my friends.