8/26/07 Dream Journal:
In the first part of the dream I am moving into an apartment that has lots of closets that are full of lots of other peoples’ stuff…to the degree that the other person I am moving in with…maybe a child, because there is a closet in the hallway full of kids clothes that I’m thinking should be in the closet inside the bedroom…where it belongs…but someone else’s stuff is in the bedroom closet. There are other people with me…not sure if they’re helping me or just there. Then something changed in the middle of the scene…so quickly it almost just felt like a change of my thought pattern…so that now I know I am going to be living there alone. I clearly don’t need all that room and all those closets; the stuff in the closets belongs to those other people who are with me anyway, and so they just need to find other places to store their stuff…it shouldn’t be in my place anyway. But then, if it were gone, the place would be way too big for me. So I began wondering to myself if I should, in fact, be looking for another place to live that would be more suitable to my needs, but the other people didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with the picture. They assumed I would just continue to move into this place regardless of the change of situation (which they somehow knew about even though it happened so quickly and none of us spoke of it).
There is also a scene I keep going back to, which is a bare mattress with all sorts of little silver jewelry findings scattered on the end of it, inside and outside of a clear plastic beading organizer box. Every so often throughout this segment of the dream I would find myself at the end of that bed sorting through the mess, trying to pick up these particular findings with prongs and get them sorted into the organizer…but it was a very slow process…I could only get around to picking up a few of them each time I was there.
In the next scene, I’m with my boyfriend and he is cooking something really good…it’s like some sort of organic, healthy pasta and it’s really good. He has given me a bowl of it and I’m eating some of it while he continues what he’s doing in the kitchen. Then he finishes and comes over to the table to eat…apparently I was supposed to eat some out of the bowl and leave some for him…but I’ve eaten most of it and now there is only a little left for him. He looks at the bowl in disbelief…I feel horrible that I’ve eaten so much without consideration for him. I begin apologizing, saying that I don’t believe I ate that much without realizing what I was doing…it was just so good…and I must have been really hungry. He continues to just stand there and look at the bowl…he says, “No, you weren’t.” I continue apologizing, feeling so helplessly guilty, knowing somehow that he is not going to forgive me for this, and so how can I forgive myself? I have done a terrible thing. He continues to stand there, staring, helplessly. It’s like he thinks that’s all the food there is in the world…there are no other options for him. Because I ate most of his portion he will go hungry. I know that isn’t true and I wonder why we can’t get past this. Why can’t we make more or make something else…but he won’t let go of the idea that half the food in the bowl should have been his. He will not entertain any other options for satisfying his hunger. He will not consider eating the portion I have left him. It is not good enough. He is determined to continue to be angry…and more importantly…hurt…over this.
At one point I say again that I don’t believe I ate that much…that I must have needed it…he responds something like…”No, you didn’t need it. You absolutely have control over what you eat. You could easily get your weight down to where you were only 10 pounds away from your intended weight.”
Next, I’m standing in front of him. He is now sitting in the chair at the table, so he is positioned almost even with my fist, which I am clenching and releasing…clenching and releasing. I am so angry I could spit…and though it would be easy, I am determined not to cry. I am visualizing what it would feel like…physically and emotionally…if I were to let my fist make contact with his face. How dare he! I am watching myself from behind now…watching my fist clench and release…clench and release…finally I say to him, “You have no idea how badly I’d like to punch you in the face right now.”
I leave the room he is in…angry, and determined to get back to whatever it was I was doing before this…as I leave the dining room I close a door behind me. Now I’m walking down a long hallway that is all brown with dark paneling and doors on both sides along the way. I’m heading toward a door at the end of the hallway where I know I will return to the scene where I have been moving into the apartment. As soon as I pass through that door I turn around and go back to the room where he is and try once again to apologize for eating his dinner. Nothing has changed with him…he is still hurt and unforgiving. I am no longer angry with him for his comment about my weight. I only feel guilt for having deprived him from enjoying the food he had prepared. I give up and head back through the hallway toward my “moving in” project, but when I pass through the door at the end of the hallway I am again in the the dining room where he is…I must have so consumed with guilt that I turned around in the hallway without conscious decision. I immediately turn leave the dining room again and this time, when I pass through the door at the end of the hallway I am back in my “apartment.”
Mel Erickson: Writer, Traveler, Observer, Occasional Deep Thinker 