Self-Mother

Vivid dreams have always fascinated me,and because of that fascination they have always been a large part of my life. I pay attention to my dreams, not necessarily because I think they are meant to be deciphered, but because if I decipher them I am sure to find something out about my current Self and her perspective.

Often I do not dream about people I know, many times I only dream about my self going through surreal ordeals. The closer a person is to me at any given time, the more they are in my conscious thoughts, the less likely they will visit me in my dreams. The exception being if I miss them a whole lot, or if I have a huge crush on them. All this to say it is unusual for my brother and sister to show up in my dreams, and even more rare for my mother to show up. Right now I can't really remember my father ever showing up in my dreams, though I am sure he has a few times.

Through the years, however, I have had a series of dreams about my mother always involving the stove. When I was young I would dream that I was trying to get my mother's attention, but she would be completely ignoring me as she was trying to stir/save/clean up four pots boiling over (usually with a nasty brown gravy) on each of the stove's burners. As I got older the dreams became more urgent. I would be attacked by a giant squid in my room, and I would scream and scream her name, but she had to attend to the messy stove. In one dream that I actually recorded in my dream journal, my "Uncle" was chasing me around the kitchen with a big knife and she didn't even look up from the stove, which was exploding and sizzling with gravy. There were many dreams where my mother would purposely abandon or ignore me, but most of them involved the stove. I came to interpret the stove as a representation of all my mother's worries and obsessions, and the dreams as manifestations of my deep fear that I was not important to her. For many years, since moving out of our house, I have not had any dreams along these lines.

Some of you may know that when my social anxiety was at its worst during college, I blamed her. Some of you may remember that after my breakup with Evan I somehow blamed her too, and without understanding why I would constantly be stressed out and even angry at any interaction with my parents at all. Slowly this has been worked through and I now feel like she is somebody I can turn to in some matters, and my Dad as an interesting conversationalist. I love them, and I guess I always have.

Lately I have been having very vivid and very un-dreamlike dreams. They are almost indistinguishable from reality, because they don't follow dream logic. So the other night in my dream my mother was cooking at my stove, while I was doing the dishes. There was only one burner on, and it contained simmering water with about a serving of spaghetti in it. She was stirring this gently with a fork. I can't remember the exact wording of what she was saying, but she basically gave me a new perspective about my Self.

In general, I see my Self as split between two main divisions of personality aspects. With my left hand, I always gesture to explain I have what I call a "domestic" side. With my right hand, I always gesture to explain I have what I call a "rebel" or a "gypsy" side. One side of my Self could live in a small town in Iowa, raise kids, go to church, live peacefully and quietly. The other side wants to travel the world, shock people into thinking, fascinate and seduce, live loud and large. What my dream-mother revealed to me, is that these two sides are not so much at odds as I had previously come to think. In the end they are working together to find a balance in order to reach a shared goal. That goal is to avoid being "ordinary". (She did use that word). I am someone, she reminded me, who realizes how extraordinary it would be to live a quiet and happy life, and to build a happy domicile and family. Both sides of me want to prove that I am not "ordinary," and the left side of me most often wins because I realize that it is really the tougher and more rewarding road. It is not the case, as I previously thought, that I want the domestic life in order to live the easy and safe life well away from my fears. Then she reminded me, that the urge to not be ordinary, is in fact very ordinary. By flailing around and allowing my happiness to depend to much on my fear of being ordinary, I am really fighting against what would make me extraordinary and establishing myself as another ordinary human trying to overcoming their ordinary Self. This all ended on a hopeful note, as I sat pondering her words and she began to strain the pasta.

As I thought this dream over the next day, I was struck by how logical, revealing, and straightforward this dream was. It offered me a whole new perspective on life. But there was another aspect to the dream than this conversation. In the dream I understood that the mother was not supposed to represent my mother, but rather my "Self-Mother" who is a compilation of real facts about my mother, idealizations of my mother, and most importantly the part of my Self that is a mother to me and others. Looking back over my stove-mother dreams, I saw them in a whole new light. I have not only been a child afraid that their mother is ignoring them, a person afraid of anyone ignoring them afraid of being ordinary, but I have also been a person unwilling to take care of, nurture, and self-mother my Self. However, this is changing. I am coming to terms with my humanness. With my needs. With the okayness of taking care of my Self, of making her feel safe. How different this most recent dream about my Self-Mother/ Mother was.

Now, I'm not saying the individuation process is over for me, but I do think I have made significant progress. The anger I felt toward my parents was always coupled with a conscious decision to distinguish my Self from them. To no longer make decisions based on their happiness but rather based on what is best for me. And this extends further than my parents, to anybody that I may begin to perceive as like my parents. People I have met these last few years that have their own needs that they want me to fulfill, and whom I have tried to rely on to fill my needs. I have purposely pushed neediness aside on both ends, all the while hoping to establish a mature adult Self capable of nurturing self and others and allowing them to nurture me without being needy or dependent. I am not proud of the mistakes I have made in this process, and I wasn't always sure why I was making those mistakes as I went along, and the process isn't over but I have made significant progress and hopefully it will all be worth it. I would like to be somebody who in the future could create a strong and happy community. I would like my house to be a safe haven as well as an intellectually stimulating mecca. I would like my children to be happy and strong, and to never try to make my children into my parents as I believe my parents did to me. This is my dream for the future. Who will help me?