Matt left me for a Chinese girl

I've been having weird dreams. Not the fun silly kind, but the kind that make you wake up crying. The kind that make you feel relieved to realize you're awake, but still leave you feeling shaken and slightly terrified of life.

I've had dreams about getting into car crashes with children in the back seat. I've had dreams about my kids going missing, or my friend's kids going missing while they were in my care. I've had dreams about men trying to steal me away from my husband, and I don't even remember that I'm married and a mother until after we've run off together, willingly. Absolutely awful.

The dream that really messed with me, though, happened a couple of months ago. After the dream, I woke up with the kids like normal, kissed Matt goodbye, and then privately burst into tears in the bathroom. That doesn't happen much around here.

But when you're mourning the hypothetical loss of your husband to a Chinese girl, you can't help it.

Basically, Matt left me. He simply found a woman he loved more, who happened to be Chinese. (It's okay to laugh here. Imagine Matt next to a tiny little Chinese girl, and you'll wonder why I took this dream seriously.)

See the resemblance?

The worst part:  he wasn't even mean to me. I couldn't even hate him for it because he still spoke to me civilly. Every sentence was just matter-of-fact, completely apathetic. I was there in the dream absolutely throwing myself at him, begging through tears for an explanation...and he would just look at me, smile, and keep talking as if he was having lunch with a coworker.

That is not my Matt. That should have been my clue that I was dreaming. Because Matt has too much love, and hate, and stubbornness, and absurdity inside him to be any kind of apathetic.

So...

I have gathered some information that's sure to help me next time I'm stuck in a dream and not sure what/who is actual reality.

If this were a different world, I sometimes might suspect that Matt was being impersonated by an alien. Or a mysteriously tall Tom Cruise with a Mission Impossible face skin mask. Or someone under the influence of Polyjuice Potion. If I had such suspicions, or if he worried the same thing about me, here's what I would ask/tell him to ensure identities.

***I hereby impart to you all of Matt's secrets!***

Top 3 TV crushes of Matt's adolescence:

#1) Winnie from the Wonder Years

#2) Topanga from Boy Meets World

...I know...Who didn't have a crush on these babes?...But wait...

#3) AUNT ZELDA from SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH

The one with the cat. Maybe that's what Matt sees in me...a potentially hot cat lady.

He secretly used to cover his zits with a little of my makeup before work. I'd find it in a weird place on the bathroom counter, and that's how I caught him. (Because Matt physically cannot put anything back where it goes, ever. It's literally a disorder.)

He dropped all the fondant for my sister's wedding cake on the kitchen floor, and then used it on the cake anyway.

He once got pee all over his pants trying to "no-hands" it at a rest stop. This was on a high school field trip. He had to get back on the school bus holding his sweatshirt over his pants, and then insisted on keeping the windows open for the long, cold ride home so no one would smell the urine.

He is an obsessive formatter. If he's making a document or PowerPoint presentation, he will spend most of his time making sure everything is lined up just right and looks symmetrical. It's another disorder.

He has an irrationally intense dislike for the following:

- Spaghetti

- Rachael Ray and Giada De Laurentiis

- Pants that have to be zipped or buttoned

- Cold tile

- German pancakes

- Fergie

- Mispronunciation of the name of his hometown, Tem-PEEEEEEE

- Mispronunciation of the word "crepe"

- Younger siblings pointing out that they are taller than him

- The teeny tiny recycling bin under our kitchen sink

- "Shake It Up" on Disney Channel (If this comes on the TV even accidentally, he cringes and starts shouting like he's trying to protect our children from a rush of F-bombs.)

Matt will develop an eye twitch just from this picture.

Things Matt does that could be considered creepy:

- sleep walks/talks/screams/runs (ask me about finding this out on our honeymoon)

- periodically looks through my phone to read all my recent texts, "not" like a paranoid psycho jealous lover

- closes his eyes, takes MY finger, and jams it into his eye socket until I'm pretty much scratching his brain

- produces the grossest, nerdiest, strangest faces I've ever seen. This is includes flipping his eyelids inside out, and squishing any kind of food through his teeth. I'll spare you from pictures.

So Matt (if that's your real name), the next time you try to leave me for a Chinese girl, I'll be ready.