Patricia: Part 5

Patricia had been seeing her therapist, Dr. Liz Evans, for two months now. A disturbing dream in which she saw herself eating a cat was the first dream Patricia would bring to Dr. Evans. She felt nervous as she waited in the small waiting room, classical music playing softly in the background. What would Liz think of her dream? Would she think Patricia was evil and beyond help, eating a poor defenseless animal like that? Patricia shuddered, “Disgusting,” she murmured to herself.

As soon as Dr. Evans opened her door, Patricia’s news about her dream came spilling out. “You won’t believe what I dreamed!” she exclaimed, one word tumbling over another, “It was so gross, so disgusting!”

Liz’s eyes widened, her eyebrows raised with surprise. “Do tell all!” she begged.

Patricia moved toward the sofa in the sitting area of Liz’s office and awkwardly lowered herself onto its plump cushions. Liz sat opposite her, leaning forward in anticipation of hearing the dream. As Patricia recounted the dream, Liz listened attentively, nodding here, murmuring an encouraging word there. When Patricia was finished, she closed her eyes, afraid to see Dr. Evans’s reaction. She could hear the ticking of the clock as moments passed.

Finally, Patricia opened her eyes. Dr. Evans was waiting quietly, but smiled when she saw the wary look on Patricia’s face. “What do you make of it?” she asked. “Immediately after you woke up, what did you think or feel?”

Patricia thought back to that night and told Dr. Evans as much as she could recall about her emotions and thoughts about the dream that night, ending with comments about how disgusting and upsetting the behavior of her dream self was to her even now. “I want to know what you think about it!” she said somewhat anxiously.

“May I tell you a little bit about how we do dream work in depth psychology?” Dr. Evans asked.

“Yes!” Patricia answered enthusiastically. Somehow Dr. Evans had a way of diffusing her anxiety and embarrassment about herself. She still felt that it was shameful that she could even dream something like that. But Dr. Evans didn’t seem disturbed by the dream at all, or seem to have a negative reaction to it.

Dr. Evans spent several minutes outlining the parts of a dream and how depth psychologists see the dream as pictures of the parts of oneself that are unconscious to the dreamer. Different dreams have different functions,” she explained, “and it’s our job to try to snoop out what your inner self is trying to tell you.” The approach made the dreamer the expert on her own dreams, rather than looking to the psychoanalyst to try to decipher contents that were unique to the dreamer. “I can help you by suggesting archetypal meanings–characters or images that are common to all of us–but that’s usually most useful when you get stumped and can’t figure out what your inner self is trying to show you.”

“So every part of that dream was probably a part of myself?” Patricia asked. Dr. Evans nodded her agreement. “Even the me that was eating the cat?”

Dr. Evans nodded her agreement again. “Yes, most especially,” she said. “In fact, I’m wondering about your strong emotional reactions against that image. Tell me about that.” Dr. Evans reached for her paper and pen as she waited for Patricia’s answer.

Patricia rolled her eyes with disbelief. “You don’t get why I’m grossed out by myself eating a cat?!” she exclaimed. Dr. Evans laughed and shrugged her shoulders helplessly as if mystified.

Chuckling too, Patricia explained that she hated cats in the first place, but felt sorry for the dream cat because it was so frightened and scrawny, obviously starving. There was some sense of necessity in the dream that made Patricia feel afraid and nervous as she thought about her dream self chasing the cat through dark, foggy alleyways.

“As quickly as you can, give me a bunch of words–things you associate with cats,” Dr. Evans urged.

“Purina Cat Chow, nine lives, survivors, gray, skinny, weak, breakable, unreliable, picky, dishonest,” Patricia responded. As she finished her list, Patricia felt surprised at the way the words came tumbling out of her. Wow, all that was what she felt about the gray cat? Surprising!

“Do those associations ring a bell for you? Is there anyone in your life who fits that description?” Dr. Evans asked.

A surge of anxiety and realization swept over Patricia. “My mother!” she exclaimed. “That exactly describes her, except for the cat food!”

“What makes you say that?” Dr. Evans asked.

“Because it’s true,” Patricia answered, “She was a survivor but weak at the same time, fragile, and so dishonest. She lied to us kids all the time, said she would change, said she’d leave my dad, said she’d protect us. She never did,” she ended sadly.

“And you’re sad.” Dr. Evans looked at Patricia sympathetically.

Tears welled up in Patricia’s eyes. “Oh, my God, yes. Yes!” As the tears threatened to spill over, Patricia stopped herself. “Stop it!” she said out loud, her mouth taking on its customary determined line.

“It’s not OK to cry?” Dr. Evans asked.

“Oh, it’s OK, sure,” Patricia answered, “but it doesn’t change anything, ever. My mom cried all the time and it never changed a damn thing!”

“You’re feeling angry?”

“Damn straight!” Patricia cried, “For God’s sake, she was the mother! It was her job to fucking protect us but she was so damn weak, she couldn’t protect herself or anyone!”

“So who took care of you?”

“I took care of myself, that’s who! I took care of myself and I was just a fucking CHILD!!!!” Patricia spat vehemently.

“You’re mad! And you have every reason to be!” Dr. Evans exclaimed.

“I’m FURIOUS!” Patricia cried. “FURIOUS!!!” But just as suddenly as her rage erupted, she began to laugh.

Dr. Evans raised her eyebrows with surprise, asking, “What just happened?”

“Furious… furrious… furious… furry us,” Patricia explained. “See?” Patricia leaned forward. “I dreamed about a cat. The cat was furry. We were all kind of like my mother, weren’t we? Weak, dishonest, breakable, foggy, kinda all gray instead of … living in color, because of my dad, because it was too scary to really be alive around him, he was always drunk and flying into rages. It wasn’t safe, it was like being in a fog all the time.”

“And so?” Dr. Evans asked.

“And… and I…” Patricia trailed off.

“Where are you?” Dr. Evans asked.

“I suddenly drew a blank!” Patricia explained. “Something about the dream made sense and I just lost it, whatever it was.”

“Go with the feeling,” Dr. Evans suggested, “You were angry, you were afraid, you were in a fog…” she prodded.

“Oh!” Patricia exclaimed, “Yes, that’s it! All this rage…” But suddenly Patricia felt defeated. She was at the brink of seeing something important but she backed off from it, and now she couldn’t see it at all. She looked helplessly at her therapist.

“Let’s go with the solution your dream gave you, the one at the end, and see where it takes us,” Dr. Evans suggested.

“What? With me eating the cat?” Patricia shuddered.

“Yes, with you eating the cat. What does it mean, to eat something?”

Patricia looked at the ceiling. “You eat it. It goes inside. It’s raw, it’s disgusting, it’s terrible. But you eat it and it goes inside, and it becomes part of you.” Patricia started to feel as if some sort of light or power was beginning to open up above her head. “And you keep what you need, and you get rid of the rest.”

“Patricia,” Dr. Evans breathed, “that’s big. That’s… something. What do you think now?”

“I felt all that rage, that rage reminds me of my dad; and the cat is like my mom. And if I’m eating the cat, it’s like I’m so mad at her, and I’m a monster, and I’m eating her and all the bad about her, but the good too. I have it inside me.”

“And the bad? Her bad parts and your father’s bad parts?” Dr. Evans asked, “And your own?”

Patricia looked at Dr. Evans warily. “What do you mean?”

“Is it possible that the solution you found to surviving was to take the rage and identify with your dad?” Dr. Evans asked gently. “And yet hate him at the same time, meaning you can never really love your self, your real self, that child who was weak and fragile, breakable and all the things your mother was, too, and leave that child behind?”

Patricia began to cry. “Yes! Oh, yes… I see it, I saw it a minute ago right before I drew that blank. I can’t stand weakness!”

“We sometimes draw blanks,” Dr. Evans explained, “when realizing something that we’ve hidden from ourselves is just too difficult. But today, you had the courage to press forward, and look at what you’ve seen. This is important, Patricia. This is amazing. I’m so proud of you, that you could bring this dream and share so openly about yourself and your past today. I’m grateful that you trusted me to do this.”

Dr. Evans handed Patricia a box of tissues as Patricia continued to cry softly. Patricia thought she might never stop crying. From time to time she felt ashamed as tears and snot ran down her face, and she buried her face in her hands. But somehow, Dr. Evans was calm and accepting, and Patricia’s shame and embarrassment began to subside.

“This is why you’re here, my dear,” Dr. Evans said, “Because you were a little girl and you needed a mom and a dad you could trust and rely upon, and you didn’t have that. You had to grow up so fast, take care of your sister and baby brother, and even care for your mom. That’s a lot to ask of a little girl. No wonder you identified with your father. But now you’re in a safe enough place that your inner self, your trustworthy guide, can show you parts of the map of the way back home.”

“A dream is a map?” Patricia asked, finally calming down.

“Kind of,” Dr. Evans replied. “It doesn’t really show you where you’re going, but it does show you how to get there. Next time, we’ll see if you’ve had any other clues like dreams or events that stir you up, and together, we’ll try to figure out what path your true self is setting you on.”

Patricia stood to her feet and impulsively grabbed Dr. Evans in a bear hug. Dr. Evans hugged her back.

“Thank you!” Patricia exclaimed, “Thank you so much! I feel so much better, even if I’m still kind of confused and upset about the dream and all, but thank you. You make me feel so safe, for the first time in my life, I feel like maybe–”

“Maybe what?” Dr. Evans prodded.

“Like maybe I could be a good person some day,” Patricia answered.

Patricia: Part 4

She was in a city of cobble-stoned streets and narrow, covered walkways that twisted and turned here and there. The air felt dense and cloying, and a low-lying thick fog permeated everything. Patricia was running and stumbling along the street, chasing a scrawny gray alarmed cat that seemed neither adult nor kitten, having the size of an adolescent feline.

As she ran, Patricia felt mounting exasperation and rage. No matter how close she seemed to get to the cat, she could never catch it.

Suddenly, the cobbled streets were gone and Patricia was in a brightly lit, sterile environment like a hospital or surgery. Though everything was white, the tiled walls seemed to have grime and mold in the grout. From the corner of her eye, Patricia saw debris in the corner.

At the same time she realized that her environment had changed, Patricia’s perspective changed in the hurdy-gurdy waywardness of the dream state. She saw herself crouched in the corner of the tiled room, convulsing over something dark and sinister. The dreamer observed herself with mounting horror. Just as she realized she shouldn’t be so close to her convulsing self, the crouching Patricia turned a snarling face at the dreamer. Her mouth was covered with blood. The juxtaposition of white teeth outlined bloody. Crouching Patricia’s maw opened in a vicious but silent scream, and dreaming Patricia realized with horror that the other Patricia was eating the gray cat.

Patricia was suddenly awake, shaking and terrified. “Oh, my God!” she thought, “What the hell is wrong with me?!” She could still feel the fear rushing through her body as she got up to go to the bathroom, her belly heavy with child by now, her footsteps slow. She felt a momentary twinge of guilt about putting her unborn baby through such an experience, and compassion rushed in afterward. “Poor baby,” she said to her unborn son.

But, just as quickly as her love reached out to him, she shut it down. “This is why you’re not staying with me, little man. The last thing you need is a crazy mama.”

As she shuffled back to bed, Patricia remembered that she’d be seeing her therapist, Dr. Evans, later in the day. “Wonder what she’ll think about this?” she asked herself, settling down into bed and calming her breathing.

Wind Talkers

In the 2002 movie, Windtalkers, Navajo marines used their native tongue to communicate military strategies and information to their units without betraying information to the enemy. I’m reminded of this movie today as I write about the codes we must use and decipher if we’re to understand communications sent from the parts of ourselves that are not consciously perceived by the ego. While I have a bit of time, I thought I’d comment about how this works by using a recent dream I had to illustrate.

You handful of readers still hardy enough to read this blog will recall that I mentioned a week or so ago a dream I had in which I had a dying child. The image was disturbing, to say the least. Of course I hesitated to share it, being a rather private person by nature, for which I like to thank  the influence of Saturn in the 12th house at the time of my birth–no mistake, for I am “fearfully and wonderfully made” by a God who sets all things in motion and even, according to the Scriptures, uses the stars and planets to influence seasons and events. In spite of (or because of) this secrecy or need for privacy I feel from whatever source or for whatever reason, I am also fascinated by mysteries and the unconscious, and like the good depth psychologist I aspire to be, I follow the tradition of my elders and am willing to demonstrate my own inner tomfoolery and skullduggery for purposes of instruction.

the way it works

The way it works is this: an image appears in a dream. In my dream, the image of a small, black, female child around age seven to ten years, emaciated and dying, her eyes rolling back into her head. She is panting with the sort of pants that dying people have, the sort of breathing that my daughter had for hours before she died. This child in my dream was not my daughter, and not intended to be my daughter. I didn’t know her, but I knew she was my child. In the dream, I had laid her out in the yard to die, and eventually went and fetched her and was carrying her off-handedly in the crook of my left arm, while with my right hand I was drinking tea from a mug and idly chatting with some other vaguely defined adult female figures in my home. I have the impression this was in the great room of my house, where kitchen, dining area, and sitting area before the fireplace all run together and where we spend most of our time at home.

After waking up, I felt sorry that this image had come up from my unconscious, and I fretted, wondering what part of my self was on the verge of death, and being treated in such a cavalier manner by my dream ego. I felt discomforted that the girl was dying, uneasy that my dream ego hadn’t felt or acted like someone whose child was dying in her arms.

Because this is my dream, what it means is not open to interpretation by anyone else. While we could all speculate about the meanings of a dream, and while many universal symbols can and do appear in our dreams, the bottom line is that every dream is unique to every dreamer. I can research what a symbol means when I dream it, and discover what different cultures and times have said or taught about that symbol, but in the end the code my sleeping self is giving my waking ego is a special code that is finally mostly decipherable by me.

the dream in analysis

If I shared this dream image with another analyst, he or she would help me outline the setting, actors, images, development, and action of the dream, and ask what my associations are with the elements of the dream. He or she would ask what my feeling was upon awakening, what the general, overriding impression was. We would begin to decipher the code by associating everything, every element of the dream. Because it would take too long to decipher every single element of this particular dream of mine (weeks, actually), I will choose only one element, the one that raises the most emotion in me and probably in others: the  image of the dying child.

What does a dying child mean to me? It reminds me of my daughter, Olivia. Was the child Olivia? No. Well, what else, then? I would associate every single thing I have that connects to a dying little black girl of that age: my own daughter, the African children we tried to adopt, children I have seen on television, a film I recently watched on refugees in north Africa, sisters who were the first African American children to attend my grade school and about whom a school assembly was held when I was in first or second grade, and my memory of talking with the little girl who was about my age (that age of 7-10 years old); who I was in first and second grade; that I decided to become a writer in second grade; how I felt as a girl among other girls at that age (different, isolated, other-worldly, unfit in my own body, a stranger in a strange land).

At this point, my feeling would begin to erupt, and I would somehow stumble over that feeling of different, isolated, other-worldly, unfit in my own body, a stranger in a strange land, for this is just exactly what the two little black girls were in our white, suburban world: different, isolated, other-worldly, unfit in their own bodies in a white culture, strangers in a strange land. I recall how beautiful and exotic they were, how black their skin, how curly and braided and beribboned their hair, and how they, unlike we white girls, wore fabulous party dresses to their first day of school, huge petticoats underneath and the dresses as vibrant and gorgeous as Easter eggs. I remember sidling up to the girl who was my age as we rode on the merry-go-round, which I never otherwise rode on but braved the perils of just to talk with her, and I remember telling her, “I like your dress, it’s beautiful.” I remember her liquid brown eyes, and I remember how she said, “Thank you,” and how her younger sister hid behind her. And we were spinning.

I remember feeling that way throughout my school years: as if I could hide, as if I should be wearing a beautiful dress and twirling, as if only I could see that I did not fit into this world of white bobby socks and loafers and plaid jumpers and pressed white shirts. As if I didn’t have blonde hair and blue eyes and freckles on my nose.

And what did it mean to me, being black? To me at that time, it meant being free and having a culture, paradoxically during a time when black Americans were not free at all, really, and when they were alienated from the larger culture and just being ordered into white schools in the south, and where white people like me continued to grow up in all-white schools and neighborhoods, well until we were in high school, for the most part.  I would also associate the image to what it currently means to me, black-girl-who-is-seven-to-ten-years-old-and-dying. I would make lists or draw a sunburst with rays of meaning radiating out.

Returning to the meaning that holds the most affect for me, I would see that I identified with the desire to be free as well as the alienation from the culture and what was commonplace and commonly accepted as “right” back in the day when I was seven or eight years old. And now in this  recent dream, my black child was dying. Had I lost a part of my self? Or was it just the opposite, a sign that part of my shadowy and thus unlived life (the Shadow is always about the unlived life) had ceased being projected and was now free to be let go of, and not impregnated with value the way it had been before? So much so that I would be merely indifferent to it? That I had finally lived that unconscious material and stopped projecting it, stopped identifying with it, and its life was ended, and my ego was so indifferent to all it had taken to get me there that she would drink tea off-handedly while that image-carrier slowly died in her arms?

Yes, that does say something about my ego. She can be such a cold bitch, so much worse for being truly cold and not just cold in the theatrical way that sells box office tickets. But really cold. That part of my self that turned away from my own suffering for so many years: still alive and well, and sipping tea. Look out, my witness warns, she’s still there, like your mother, indifferent and cold to your suffering going on right under her nose. Be careful. Full of care; don’t neglect all you’ve gone through and all the manifestations of self and all your various incarnations who got you here. There is something cold as steel and darker than ore here. Watch out. Don’t look away.

deciphering the code

So this is how we begin to unravel it, what it means. And I pray for guidance and I watch for it, “watching daily at your gates” as the prophet wrote, waiting for the messenger from God. I do my conscious work with the unconscious contents, coaxing the message out and working on the code like an archaeologist might carefully and gently labor to clean and restore an ancient bit of pottery or an old manuscript.

Bits and pieces of meaning come up here and there, and I know when I am on the right track when this piece says, “Aha!” and that piece suddenly causes me to well up with tears, and another piece makes me laugh out loud. I know, then, that I’m a wind talker. And I watch my conscious ego with a raised eyebrow, for I know she can be a cold bitch drinking tea with a dying child in her arms. I see her perspective is I-can’t-be-bothered and I-don’t-have-time-for-this and I’m-interested-in-what-I-want-now and perhaps Aren’t-you-dead-yet? (Almost.)

sex and the city and saint john the baptist

Another week goes by and I am watching Sex and the City: The Movie, which I don’t like much because the naked sex scenes are just too much, and not erotic or beautiful at all, just showing what our culture is like and it is not different than the dog humping the pillow we see through the third part of that movie. But other parts of it, the parts that show Manhattan and the haute couture, and four friends surviving their middle age together, appeals to me. Though it is unlike me to continue to watch a movie that is so blatantly vulgar, I watch it to the end because of that something in it, and at the very end as they are toasting Samantha on her 50th birthday, suddenly I find myself in tears. I am in tears because I love New York City, it is my favorite city in the world and I haven’t been there in over 10 years now, and I long to go there. I’m in tears because of all the friends I’ve left behind, and because of who I am, because of my Saturn-in-the-12th-houseness which makes me, in part, colder than a November moon, and aloof like that, constant and luminous but above everything and everyone that is mortal, but not so aloof as to be anything greater than a moon dependent on heavenly bodies greater and warmer than I.

I am rocking with tears and heaving because of who I am, the who I always knew I was and left, just to be popular and liked (and I was) and successful (and I was) and admired, liked and perhaps loved, only to find that only the real, authentic me was ever truly lovable and that there was no good reason to abandon her, to put her out in the yard to die, and to wait until she was near death to show her the least bit of compassion. But she lived anyway, or perhaps she died and rose again on the third day and, like my favorite icon of Saint John the Baptist, holds her own head on a platter, wings of glory and transcendence trailing out behind her, a sober look on her face that means, “I am alive again, but I had to die to get here.”

ash wednesday

And on the eve of Ash Wednesday, all I can say to God is, “Thank you, God, for who I am. And I’m sorry for who I am. And thank you.”

I slide another piece of the puzzle into place, and I gaze at it, sober. I feel very sad, but also proud of myself. I feel very solid with God and with my self. I neither particularly love or hate my self, neither particularly loathe or appreciate the aspects of that self that I see, or even the parts that I only see “through a glass darkly.”

And if I identify with anything today, I can identify with the ashes smudged on my forehead, and with what Father said when he put them there this morning, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”