Sometimes, allergy medicine dreams are weird.
I had one once where I was fishing false teeth out of a pond. Supposedly, people lose them when they smile while swimming. (According to the fish, anyway—and he seemed oddly confident about it.)
I woke up thinking, “What even was that?” But as the grogginess wore off and the caffeine kicked in, I realized—dream logic or not—that image kind of made sense.
Smiling so hard you lose your teeth? Yep. Been there.
Real life is kind of like that. You’re swimming through your to-do list, waving to people on shore, trying to be the cheerful one, the capable one, the one who keeps it all moving forward. You smile because it’s what you do.
You smile while parenting.
While answering emails.
While loading the dishwasher for the third time in 24 hours.
While dragging yourself through a group project where you’re clearly the only one who has opened the syllabus.
You smile while swimming.
And then—plop—something slips.
Your joy.
Your lightness.
Your patience.
Your sense of humor.
Your confidence.
Your smile.
Not the surface-level, Instagram-ready smile. The real one. The one that comes from deep in your gut when you’re at peace with yourself and your life. That smile doesn’t float. It sinks quietly, without announcement. One day it’s there, and the next it’s hiding under layers of stress, burnout, overcommitment… and maybe a splash of shame.
Gone. Just like that.
At the bottom of the metaphorical pond.
“Of course, people lose their teeth when they smile underwater.” That’s what dream-me said. And honestly? It kind of checks out.
But here’s the thing: Losing your smile doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It just means you need to go back and find it.
It doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’re human.
Some days, you feel the loss right away—by mid-morning you’re snappier, more easily frustrated, kind of hollow. Other times, it sneaks up slowly. You stop laughing quite as much, stop texting your friends back, stop noticing sunsets or music or how your coffee smells in the morning. You start living more from muscle memory than from meaning.
I’ve been there. I’ve walked into a room and forgotten why I came in—not just literally, but existentially. Why am I here? Why am I doing this again?
Some days, it’s enough to just notice that something’s missing. Other days, it’s a full-on emotional scuba dive—goggles, flippers, flashlight, and all—into the messy stuff underneath.
But if something slips? That’s not failure.
That’s physics.
And when you go looking, give yourself grace.
Grace for the version of you who dropped it.
Grace for the part of you that’s tired and stretched and trying.
Grace to say:
“You bet, I dropped it. I’ve been doing my best impression of someone who has it all together.”
Retrieving your smile might look like:
- Canceling plans.
- Dancing in your kitchen.
- Texting your ride-or-die just to say, “Okay, I’m losing it.”
- Saying no without overexplaining.
It might be laughing at a fish in a dream—or at yourself in real life.
Whatever it is, it counts.
You haven’t lost it forever.
Even if it’s soggy.
Even if it smells like pond water.
Even if you have to chase it down with one flipper and a broken snorkel.
You’re just in the middle of remembering how to find it.
Sometimes it’s messy.
Sometimes you cry first.
Sometimes you say out loud, “I don’t feel like myself right now,” to someone safe.
Sometimes you realize you’ve been in survival mode so long, your smile didn’t just sink—it packed a little bag and said: “Call me when you’re ready to come back to yourself.”
Your smile is still down there.
It is yours.
It can be reclaimed.
You might need to dig a little.
You might need to listen to the fish.
(Or the podcast. Or the therapist. Or your gut.)
You might have to wade through pond water that smells like rotting leaves and swamp muck.
But your joy is waiting. Your real smile is waiting.
It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve lost it.
It matters that you go back for it.
And maybe, just maybe, retrieving it gives you something new:
- A deeper appreciation for joy.
- A tenderness toward yourself.
- A reminder that showing up happy isn’t the same thing as being happy.
And that sometimes the real magic happens when you stop pretending—and start returning.
So yeah,… sometimes allergy medicine dreams are weird.
But if they remind you to go find your joy—even if it’s underwater and covered in pond scum?
I’d say that’s worth listening to.
Rachel L. Richard is a small-town farm girl turned suburbanite, a delightfully irreverent optimist, Mrs & Mama, floppy dog ear scratcher, lifelong learner, channel surfer, wanderer, believer, occasional creative, out-of-practice musician, cupcake addict, book devourer, and lover of all people.
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