Dreeeeeeams. Dream. Dream. Dreeeam. Dreeeeeam.

Post #2 — Continuing to explore the theme of The Invisible Woman.

Okay, so after writing all the stuff down that came up at my naturopath’s appointment (Like psychotherapy but with vitamins! That should totally be his tagline).

What I couldn’t figure out what was what the connection was between feeling forced to be on a diet (and resenting being forced) and being invisible–other than that one instance where I felt forced by virtue of a job description to be invisible. But how was a diet forcing me to be invisible? Yes, it was making me smaller, but in the acting world that only makes you more visible. Was I resisting becoming more visible?

What was the connection between the struggle of the diet and my parallel struggle to become a professional actor?

This is the question I wrote down before I went to sleep.

And this is the dream I had:

(Note: if you find people describing their dreams to be tedious and a drag, you might want to find another blog to read. Seriously.)

My dad is yelling at my mom about some large financial mistake she made. Something to do with an EBay account and transferring money and blah, blah, blah, details not important. My mom is lying ill in bed with cancer. Mrs. B. is there (a friend of the family, a woman I used to babysit for, a cancer survivor). Mrs. B is rolling her eyes at my dad’s hysterics and tsk tsk tsking without actually saying anything to him. But I can see her disapproval. I am trying to calm my dad down by yelling back at him, while I have this secondary focus of trying to attend to my very ill mother. I am angry that my Dad is yelling about something completely irrelevant to what is actually important in this scene — tending to this ill woman who is so important to us all.

A LOT of drama.

Here’s the thing. My Dad really does have a bad temper. I spent a lot of time in my youth dealing with his anger, mostly by yelling back. My mom really is ill with cancer — terminally ill actually. However, they do not have anything to do with EBay and Mrs. B. might see my parents at church but she hasn’t been at my parent’s house probably for years.

I woke up thinking that I had just had a weird dream, nothing to do with the question I asked.

Until I remembered what I believe about dreams, namely that we are all the characters in our dreams. I am my Dad. I am my Mom. I am the illness. I am Mrs. B. I am the sick bed. I am myself. I am the EBay account gone horribly wrong.

And suddenly it all made sense.

I’ve been raging at myself about my inability to do this diet correctly. Making the diet the most important thing. Making my diet the barometer of my worth. I can’t be on stage until I’m thin. And my very ill artist is trying to assuage the anger but she is too ill to really do anything about it. And really THE DIET ISN’T THE POINT. My artist needs healing and comfort. Diets are not creative food. I need to feed my artist first. The weight goal might still be a goal — but it’s not the most important goal. Healing my artist is the true focus–or it should be.

And then I wept for 10 minutes. I felt so awful for bullying my artist while not even finding out what she needs. No wonder she’s completely unwilling and perhaps unable to be on a diet. Maybe she is scared that I’m going to say — “Hey, I’ve lost 50 pounds, I must be a brilliant actor now.” Maybe staying stuck is the protection she needed since she wasn’t getting what she needed to stop being invisible.

My fat is like the quilt I’ve stuffed in the front of the closet to stop the rage from finding me hiding in the back of the closet. No wonder I didn’t want to part with it.

My only fear is that my artist is terminally ill, but I don’t think so. My subconscious used the most evocative imagery that it had on hand. Right? I could use some agreement on that point.

Now to make a practice out of finding out what my artist needs. And then doing it.

PLEASE DO FEED THE ARTIST!!!

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