The Day the Fog Caught Fire: Nervous System Overload, Neptune, Night Terrors, and Near-Misses

When exhaustion tips from internal to undeniable.

I. The Midnight Threshold: Nervous System Overload and the Subconscious

I haven’t been sleeping.

Not really.

Not the kind of sleep that resets you. Not the kind where you wake up and feel even remotely human.

I was up all night again. My toddler had night terrors — the kind that rip you out of whatever shallow rest you managed to get. Heart racing before your eyes are even open. And when I did drift off, I didn’t exactly dream.

Or maybe I did.

I saw loved ones who have passed. Not in a dramatic or frightening way. Just… there. Familiar. Close enough that I felt them when I woke up.

That lingering feeling matters.

Astrologically, this fits. Neptune rules dreams, grief, memory, and the subconscious. As its energy shifts, it often feels like old emotional rooms are being cleared out — memories walking through one last time before the door closes.

These didn’t feel like bad dreams.

They felt unfinished.

And when a parent is processing something heavy internally, kids often tune right into that frequency. My toddler’s night terrors felt like a mirror — her nervous system expressing what mine hadn’t yet had space to release.

That kind of night doesn’t end when morning starts.

It follows you.

After months of broken sleep, nervous system overload stops being a concept and becomes a lived state. Everything feels closer to the surface. Louder. Faster. One small thing away from too much.

II. The Flashpoint: The Fire

By morning, I was technically functioning.

Sleep deprivation doesn’t just make you tired. It makes you foggy. Disoriented. You can look fine while your nervous system is already pacing.

I was cooking.

The stove was on.

My husband suddenly came into the kitchen announcing an urgent diaper situation — dramatic enough that I thought he genuinely needed me right now.

So I did what exhausted parents do.

I rammed into the room to change her.

We rushed.

We bumped into things.

We finished the diaper.

It was done.

And then — after the crisis that turned out not to be the crisis — he ran back into the kitchen and announced the words that actually were:

“The stove is on fire.”

That’s when I ran back in.

The flames were crazy. Too big. Too fast. Too alive.

There was no thinking. No symbolism. Just heat, smoke, adrenaline. Survival mode took over before my mind could catch up.

Fire is Aries. Urgency is Aries. That move now energy that doesn’t wait for context or calm.

And when Neptune’s dream-fog collides with Aries fire, the shift from the subconscious world to the physical one isn’t gentle. It’s abrupt. Loud. Like being ripped out of a dream by a siren.

Sometimes reality doesn’t ease you awake.

Sometimes it shows up already on fire.

III. The Comedy of Chaos: The Husband & The Diaper

This part matters.

I didn’t snap because he needed help.

I didn’t snap because of the diaper.

And I didn’t snap during the fire.

I snapped after the danger was named.

He jumped into action immediately — fast, focused, doing exactly what needed to be done. And once the flames were real, once they had a name, my body finally caught up.

The adrenaline dropped — just a little.

And everything I’d been holding rushed in.

That’s where the snap happened.

Not because of him.

Not because of blame.

Because I haven’t slept through the night since October. And chronic broken sleep changes you. It lowers your threshold. It shortens your fuse. It turns ordinary stress into alarms.

Layer on top of that:

• financial pressure (honestly, Amex — are you trying to send me to Hawaii on you?)

• watching my daughter move through sickness and pain and feeling helpless

• investing in projects without knowing which will land

• hiring someone new and feeling responsible for him

• taking someone close to me to a serious medical appointment

• standing on the edge of something new while still living fully in the old, tangible 3D world

That is a lot.

So yes — I cried.

I screamed.

I wailed.

(Yes, that’s a thing.)

I reacted like a toddler whose nervous system had officially hit capacity.

And to the lovely woman delivering a package who witnessed all of this — I am so sorry. This is me, sitting in my imperfect humanness, not polishing that moment into something it wasn’t.

And then, of course, reality grounded me again.

Because after the fire, after the unraveling, the most basic truth remained:

The diaper was already done, and somehow that felt very on brand for the day.

The body still mattered.

The present moment still existed.

If Aries is the flame, this is Taurus Moon medicine — dragging you back into the physical world whether you’re ready or not. It’s humbling. It’s absurd. And in a strange way, it’s funny.

Because of course this is how it goes.

IV. Conclusion: Finding the Ground

This wasn’t a bad day.

It was a signal.

Neptune dissolves what we can’t keep carrying unconsciously. Aries ignites what we’ve been pushing past. Together, they don’t whisper. They interrupt.

Sometimes that interruption looks like insight.

Sometimes it looks like a burning stove after a completed diaper change.

Both count.

Today, I’m not trying to turn this into a lesson.

I’m choosing rest.

Because not every collapse is meant to be analyzed or spiritualized. Some are just messages from a nervous system that has been doing too much for too long.

I survived the night terrors.

I survived the fire.

I survived the diaper.

Bring on tomorrow.

A Soft Place to Land

If your nervous system feels anything like mine did that day, you don’t need a transformation plan. You need somewhere gentle to land.

That’s why I created the Karma Penguin journal — something you can come back to when your thoughts are loud and your body is tired. No pressure. No fixing. Just space.

It costs about what a latte does.

And it lasts longer.

You can find it here — no rush, no pressure:

👉 https://www.karmapenguin.com/product-page/2026-journal