The only thing worse than being confronted with the physical bludgeoning of a hangover the morning after is waking to the drained and dehydrated exhaustion one feels after a long night of hysterical sobbing.

Oh hai, and welcome to my morning.

I spent most of last night slogging through a few hundred pages of the young adult novel Twilight, which I have Catherine and Dana to resent loathe thank for (that book is, as Dana so aptly put it, "a 500 page goth fantasy vibrator." BE WARNED). But around 1:30am I started feeling drowsy, and so decided to call it a night.

That’s when the weird stomach and chest pains started. It felt as if my torso were seizing and contracting inward, my body morphing into an enormous fleshy Chinese finger trap, squeezing and clenching my organs from the outside in. I went into the bathroom and took some antacids, thinking maybe this was some kind of extreme heartburn episode. I sat down on the toilet and inspected the white ceramic tiles of our bathroom floor, rubbing my chest. And then it hit me.

I was having a panic attack.

It took a few minutes for that to fully register because it had been a while since I’d had one, but in that instant of realization one single, solitary thought rose to the surface of my mind with terrifying clarity: M starts Kindergarten Monday.

And this is around the point when the hysterical sobbing started.

It was like some wall inside of me came crashing down. I’d been repressing my anxiety about this to such a degree that my feelings were almost shocking to me, even as I found myself doubled over the bathroom sink, swabbing my runny face with tissue after tissue. I felt like an idiot, like a horrible clich√©, like That Silly Woman Who Cries Over Childhood Milestones. When, exactly, did I become such a fucking pussy?

Eventually I crawled back into bed next to J, trying (but failing) to regulate my breathing so I’d stop doing that weird weepy repetitive gasping thing, as if I was coming up for air during a long bout of drowning. J bolted up suddenly and looked at me, his eyes squinched up into tiny question marks.

Him: What… what’s wrong? Are you okay?

Me: (gasp) Noooo (gasp), I’m having a (sob) panic attack! (gasp)

Him: Oh no… what’s going on?

Me: (fully sobbing) SHE’S GOING TO KINDERGARTEN MONDAY!!! (GASP)

Him: Oh god, I know, I know.

Me: (still sobbing) I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M SUCH A SAP! (gasp) (blows nose)

Him: Yeah. But you are.

GEE THANKS, JAMIE.

But it’s true. I am. I laid there for hours, thinking thoughts only a ridiculously melodramatic mother would think. Thoughts like: My baby! My baby is going to Big School! And: It was just yesterday she was an infant and  I held her in my arms… And: What if kids are mean to her, I can’t protect her anymore! Suddenly, I saw her drifting away from me. Suddenly, it seemed that, come Monday, my girl would no longer be my girl, at least not as she’d been before. That her life would be so different, and that I would be farther outside of it than I’d ever been before.

Okay, I’m going to start crying again. Breathe, breathe. Dammit.

I know most of this is just in my head. I know I’m blowing it all out of proportion, being needlessly dramatic. I know that nothing is really changing, that it’s all symbolic and that she still has a long way to go before she stops being a little kid. I know that, intellectually.

Still, I’m keeping her home with me today, and canceling a trip I’d scheduled for this weekend that would’ve kept me away from her. I need to hold onto the preschool version of her, for just a few more days, a few more hours. I need that time to reassure myself that something isn’t really ending. I need time to convince myself that all this stupid growing up doesn’t mean I’m losing my little girl.