Sunday, May 18, 2008

Wedding Shock Therapy

Weekend #2 of pre-wedding racing-moritorium began with a fabulous Fruitstand ride with me, Mike, Gianni and our friend Scott, a non-racing dad who is a killer climber. 70 miles and several margaritas later, I finished doing the table seatings for dinner at our reception. And with THAT friendly task out of the way, I curled into bed with The New Yorker. Once I'd finished perusing the cartoons and critique of American Idol, I settled into the deeper content of this article.

Apparently, there is an experimental therapy tecnique for soldiers returning from Iraq with post-tramautic stress. They are put in a virtual reality which forces them to relive their most terrifying moments over and over again. Its purpose is to help train their brains to disassociate emotion with these events so that over time, although they will remain memories for them, they will lose their painful emotional reactions.

Scroll ahead several hours when I am now in deep REM sleep. I had a reoccuring dream all night that I was undergoing this same virtual reality therapy to help me disassociate emotion from the wedding. I was being forced to cry all day long, over and over again, and have nevous butterflies for weeks on end in the hopes of not being a crying wreck the day of the wedding. I know, being emotional is a GOOD thing on your wedding day, but this was my dream (nightmare?). I woke up this morning and laughed with Mike about the whole thing.

Since I was a little girl, I have dreamt about getting married to Pachelbel's Cannon. But as my own wedding draws near, I have been nervous that there's too much emotional attachment for me and that I will cry my eyes out from the first notes.

So, after hearing of my nightmares last night, Mike offered the perfect solution: listen to Pachelbel's Cannon over and over again, while doing intervals, so that when I hear it on my wedding day, I can enjoy it, but not have as strong of an emotional reaction.

If you see me out riding this week, here's a sneak, peak of what I've got playing on my Ipod:
(Be sure to watch long enough for the dancing to begin).

4 comments:

beth bikes! said...

haha. you just need to find one of those funny electronica versions of that song... but perhaps that will just ruin the whole thing altogether.

miss you lots!

EB said...

Mr. Man & I are lucky to never have had any big wedding dreams when we were little, so it's just going to be a low hum of sappiness from us and lots of "big event done!" relief. And then a lot of dancing :).

chatterbox said...

It's OK to cry your eyes out. Just go light on the mascara! I love Cannon in D. No need to desensitize.

Enjoy your time next weekend. It will be special! We'll look forward to having you back on le racing circuit. We missed you at Kern and at the track last week!

karla said...

Oh my god, ME TOO! Pachabel's Cannon is so amazing. I used to play it endlessly on the piano when I was little, and I have about 5 versions on my ipod now. It's OK if you cry and are a mess, it's your wedding!

Hooray.