Of Puppies, Of Floating Volkswagens, and Litterboxes

The Riddle Mother has been giving me a better work-out, these past few weeks, than the toughest boot-camp personal trainer.  Last night/this morning, my dreams featured puppies, a litterbox desperately in need of being changed (methinks the Real World is intruding a bit, there) and a seawater moat surrounding a house, in which there were half-submerged Volkswagens.

from Kid Stradivarius at Flickr

The man (not sure if he was a lover/husband, brother, or father/god figure, he was simply a man) was pushing the Volkwagen (beetles, like I used to own) into the moat, in an attempt to keep people from reaching the house.  Paradoxically, they formed a kind of floating bridge, two vehicles wide, that enabled people to reach the house.

He argued with me, as I prepared to add my own favorite bug to an empty space among the ones already there, "It'll sink, you know."

"I know," I said, "but for now, it'll help me get across."  So I pushed my car in, where it bobbed in the water, then by walking across on hoods and bumpers, I was able to reach the house.

Inside the house, we (a bunch of indistinct people & children) were cleaning up the litterbox, various animal (guinea pig?  hamster?  bird?) cages, and I was blowing up air mattresses to make it more comfortable for everyone to sleep.  Someone was passing around puppies - darling, velvety little puppies with warm soft fur and eager little tails.

When next I went outside, my own bug had sunk - I got the impression "the bottom" was several hundred feet down, and several of the other cars were low in the water.  But somehow there had formed a solid earth connection , a built-in drawbridge, from the house to the yard with the moat simply circling the sides of it now.

Exhibit A.  Yes, it did try to kill me.

I know that some of this dream was sparked by recent e-mail conversations with Thalia of Tetanus Burger, whom I hope to feature here as a guest interview soon.  Her father was OCPD - and a hoarder of automobiles and auto parts.  Specifically, Volkswagens.  Although, as I mentioned, I owned a couple of Beetles myself, and loved them.  (Well, I loved the second one.  The first one was cursed and tried to kill me a couple of times.)


I know it's significant that the cars were trying to cover/protect from an abyss, and at the same time, were both a barrier to reaching the house, and a bridge to it.

Cars can symbolize one's body and identity; they can also symbolize (obviously) something that carries one from one place to another.  It's true that my physical health/fitness hasn't been at the top of my priority list, but I don't think the dream was suggesting it's a good idea to sink it to the bottom of the ocean.

Houses also symbolize the self, life, body - so a dirty house is a sign that sorting out needs to be done. In dream symbology, a man has to do with the masculine energies, power, force, initiation, the focus to make things happen in the world.

Here's what I think my dream means - feel free to chime in with other ideas.  With this blog, and in other areas, I have been using my thoughts, experiences, and coping mechanisms (my bug) and those from lots of other people (the other cars), to build a piecemeal bridge and reconnect with my inner self.  Sadly, it's in a bit of disarray, but nothing that can't be quickly cleaned up.


The second part of the dream is easy - once all the garbage was taken away, there was room for the puppies; puppies representing, according to my dream interpret book, "your most innocent, cute, cuddly, and playful self.  You are realizing how lovable you are, and perhaps you are discovering how lovable someone else is."

from Gore Fiendus at Flickr
FYI, It's National Adopt-A-Shelter Dog Month.  Just Sayin'.

Some (not all) of my friends have suggested I am wasting my time and energies with this OCPD blog.  That I should do what many other exes do, and simply move on with my life.

My gut instinct, and my dream, are telling me I still have some bridges to build and things to learn, (and litterboxes to clean), but on the other side will be much playfulness and joy.

I think that while I do need to be mindful that this blog, and the book I hope to write on the subject someday don't take over my life (they're a big piece, but it's not the biggest piece), it's still not only important to other people, but to my own emotional and spiritual growth.

Thoughts?  Ideas?  Alternate dream interpretations?

As always, your comments mean much to me.

P.S. - In addition to our continuing Too Perfect Tuesdays, I'm guesting on The Garden Gate this Monday.  Please stop by!

Nightmare on Hoarding Street

Titanic painting via Wikimedia

When I was living with OCPD ex, I used to have nightmares, not infrequently.  I would dream of being on a sinking ship, or in a big magnificent house with the roof all tattered and open to the elements.

Once I moved out, the dreams mostly stopped having that horrific nightmare quality, though I do still dream, and they aren't all rose petal on the bed fun dreams.

Last weekend, I had my ex over for a brief afternoon, friends-type of visit, for the first time in many months.  The cat loved playing with him.  I was glad to see him - and relieved when he left.  Because he's still untreated OCPD, and some of the signs and patterns leaked out, although he was on his very best behavior.

I was filled with sadness and pity for him, but not even marginally tempted to take up where we used to be.  An objective person might find him attractive, for his age.  I see him wearing the cheap straw cowboy hat he obsessed over on one of our vacations, and it's a total turn-off.

Anyway, although our visit wasn't dreadful, I'm pretty sure my dream that night was related.  One of those horrible nightmares where you wake up with your mouth dry and your heart pounding.  (My dream interp books say these are "venting" dreams and one should be grateful for them.  Mentally, I can accept that, emotionally, it's harder to get there.)

In my dream, I was both observing (like watching a movie) and being the lead character, a young woman in her mother's hoarding house.  Not a horrible hoarding house, either, probably along of the lines of Living Room #3, here.

However, the items that had been hoarded were all possessed and/or morphing into portals into another, creepy dimension, a la Poltergeist.

So I/she was hiding out in the stark, uncluttered bathroom, trying to devise a plan to leave/escape.  Her mother was there, too, very sorry and finally ready to admit there was a problem.  We removed the shower rod and found some other stick/rod/poker kind of device, to beat back any attacking items as we tried to leave.

When we opened the bathroom door, all was quiet.  We headed for the first door to the outside, and opened it only to find another, locked door behind it.  Still the clutter didn't attack, though I saw some of it, crawling up on the walls, oozing and transforming into something threatening.

Reached the sliding glass door, pulled it open, and RAN.  Thought briefly about grabbing the cat, but was afraid to slow down or delay.

Once outside on the sidewalk, I/she found groups of neighbors gathered at another house, across the street and a couple doors down.  (The mother was no longer in the dream, although there wasn't the sense she'd been left behind in the house.)  There'd been a burglary and ransacking at that house some nights previously.  I began wondering if perhaps the creepiness of the hoard had been all in my imagination, if I'd somehow picked up the other bad vibes from the robbery and projected them into the hoarding house.  It looked so normal - from the outside.  Then about 7-8 dogs on their owner's leashes all turned to face the hoarding house and howled.  And I knew I'd been right to get the hell outta there.  The cat came strolling out then, and I felt a little scared of it, though it seemed normal.

It looks so harmless, here...

Then for some reason, in order to leave the neighborhood I had to walk past the house between it and the garage, which had several big glass windows, and I saw inside the garages mounds of clutter, topped with old Christmas paper and garland.  And I knew that it, too, was possessed by evil spirits, and I was terrified of being sucked by in, but I made it through, safely.

In the last scene/frame I was adjusting a GPS tag/marker that would be attached to the hoard, which my boyfriend ( a dream boyfriend, not anyone I know in real life) was preparing to sink to the bottom of the ocean.  Not quite sure what the mechanics were (how the clutter got gathered up, who did it, and how it got onto a raft into the middle of the ocean, all bundled together with yellow hazard tape), or the logic behind it, I just knew a tremendous feeling of relief, knowing it was sinking, and that it would no longer be able to threaten me or anyone I loved.

Pacific Ocean Garbage
Don't hate me - I know it would not be okay to ACTUALLY
dump more crap in the ocean.  It was a dream metaphor.

And I woke up.  Feeling like I'd done some heavy lifting.

I have several good dream interpretation books, and I pretty much know what all these dreams have meant: sinking ship (feeling overwhelmed), damaged roof (damaged/missing boundaries), and this latest, as well.  I definitely believe that dreams are worth paying attention to, though we must be thoughtful and leave some wiggle room when working to decipher what they are trying to tell us. 

If you'd like to add your own thoughts/impressions in the comments, or share a scary or thought-provoking dream you've had, I'd love to hear about it.

I Want To Be On A Death Panel



Photo by artist Richard Heeks

Because after all, we're all going to die anyway.

I know, that thought makes most of us uncomfortable.  We don't know, after all, what's on The Other Side, and that's kinda scary.  Some people believe in Heaven (and Hell), some people who believe in reincarnation, some people believe in nirvana, some people believe in being gods on other planets or any number of intriguing possibilities.  And some believe that one is just gone, the consciousness dissolved into nothingness.

But despite any number of fascinating stories from people who were clinically pronounced dead and "came back"  (but were they really, truly dead?) we don't know.

What we do know, for a fact, is we're not getting out of this place alive.

Many of us live like there's an actual, physical Reaper, and if we keep running/busy/active enough, we'll be able to avoid death.  Like he's a bill collector or something.  ("Pull down the shades, turn off the light and the TV, we'll pretend we're not home.")


OCPDrs carry it to extremes, but many people are so worried about what could happen in the future, what terrible thing is lurking around the corner, about protecting against every possible calamity, they fail to enjoy any of the wonderful things that are all around them, every minute of every day.  They're too busy finding green baby galoshes - because it might rain, sometime, in Southern California, and the baby's feet might get wet, and then he might get sick, and then he might die.

They're not so much Pro-Life, as they are Anti-Death.

We have to accept that we are going to die, and we have to accept that people we love are going to die.  That pain and loss are part of the admission price to this crazy Carnival called Life.  We can deny it, we can act like martyrs, and refuse to enjoy the Carnival - as if not enjoying life will entitle us to get more of it.  Hunh?

We can fight to be Cleopatra (Queen of Denial), and live like we have all the time in the world, but we don't.  We need to think about what's on our personal Bucket Lists, our dreams, and work on making them happen.  Is your dream to see the Grand Canyon?  Eat a hot dog on Coney Island?  Watch a taping of The Price Is Right?

Like Captain Picard would say on Star Trek: TNG, "Make it so."

And as far as the death panel thing, yep, there's a whooooole bunch of people I'd pull the plug on.  I don't believe, if one is extremely ill and/or 90+ years old, or in a persistent vegetative state, that it benefits anyone to take extreme measures to keep that person "alive."  (Okay, maybe the hospitals which are making a buck benefit from the care of said "person.") 

I believe that the soul has departed long before, but let's say, just for the point of argument, that it hasn't.  Let's say that the soul and spirit is still in that poor battered shell of a human body, unable to move, wipe itself, or communicate.

Could there be any worse torture than to be trapped there helplessly for weeks, months, years, not able to get out or let people know you're still in there?  To have to watch and listen to hours on end of daytime television programming?  (Whether your preference is Fox or MSN, you know they're gonna have it tuned to the other channel.)  To perhaps be in constant pain, either severe or low-grade, but nobody does anything about it because they don't know about it, and they think there is no pain?

I truly wouldn't wish such a fate on my worst enemy, and I have promised to come back and haunt anyone who does that to me.  (And not in a nice, Casper-the-Friendly-Ghost way.)  If we want to be kind and loving, we should let the person go, allow him or her to move on to...  whatever happens next.  Unless, of course, we know for a fact that the person we are "saving" would want us to fight for every breath.  I know some people in that horrible situation, knowing it's not a kind choice, but it's what their loved one wanted, so they are reluctantly carrying out those wishes.  (I'm so sorry!)

We've come a long way, in terms of preserving the physical bodies of those who would have died, 150, even 50 years ago, but that isn't always a good thing.  As a society, I think we need to reconsider what we often do to people in the last months of their lives, all in the name of "saving" them.  Saving them for what?  More torture? 

Just because we can hook somebody up to any number of modern gizmos and keep the heart beating and the lungs artificially pumped full of air and run a tube down somebody's throat to drip nutrients, doesn't mean we should.  Is an all-out battle to "buy" someone an extra two months of extreme pain, in a hospital, away from the comfort of family and pets and loved ones, always worth it?  (One friend recounted to me at her father's death, she counted - and then recounted, because she was sure she must have made a mistake - 187 tubes and wires running into his body.  187!!)

Newsweek had an interesting article recently on The Myth of Aging Gracefully.  Because of denial, we think we'll be one of the ones who's hardy, running marathons and making love into our nineties, and then drop instantly dead of a convenient heart attack or stroke, but it doesn't always work that way.

There is a 50–50 chance that anyone who survives to blow out 85 candles will endure years of significant mental or physical disability. The risk of Alzheimer’s disease doubles in every five-year period over 65. Furthermore, two thirds of Americans older than 85 are women, who usually become poorer as they age. Many won’t die at home, with the best care money can buy, as Sargent Shriver did in January, but in a Medicaid-funded nursing facility after their life savings have been exhausted.

What about living with gusto and passion?  What about accepting that death comes one to a customer, sooner or later, and making peace with that concept?  Telling loved ones every time you talk to them, that you love them, and treating them with love and kindness now? 


Image via Karen's Whimsy

For myself, I have my own Advance Medical Directive all filled out - copies with my sisters, doctor, and one in the glove compartment of my car.  Not to mention my threat to haunt people.  Your choices may be different from mine, but if you don't already have your AMD filled out, do it now.  No more excuses, no more waiting, no more "I'll do it when I have time," as if you know for sure you''ll have that time.

Cleopatra, Queen of Denial, didn't come to a very nice end, after all.

What are your thoughts on life, and death? 
What are you doing to live your life fully now?

Click a Reactions button, or leave a comment, below.

Too Perfect Tuesdays: Chapter One Continued

This post continues with more from Chapter One.

This series will look at a small snippet of The book on the Perfectionist Personality, aka The Obsessive Compulsive disordered Personality, aka OCPD, each week.  Please follow along, leave your comments, engage more on the FaceBook website... whatever your heart calls you to do.

Too Perfect, When Being in Control Gets Out of Control by Allan E. Mallinger, M.D. and Jeanette DeWyze was published by Random House in 1992.



Chapter One
The Obsessive Personality  (continued) 

If there is a single quality that characterizes obsessive people it is a powerful, unconscious need to feel in control - of themselves, of others, and of life's risks.  One of the primary ways in which this needs manifests itself is perfectionism.  A whole family of personality traits is rooted in these two needs - to be in control and to be "perfect."  These include:

• a fear of making errors
• a fear of making a wrong decision or choice
• a strong devotion to work
• a need for order or firmly established routine
• frugality
• a need to know and follow the rules
• emotional guardedness
• a tendency to be stubborn or oppositional
• a heightened sensitivity to being pressured or controlled by others
• an inclination to worry, ruminate, or doubt
• a need to be above criticism - moral, professional, or personal
• cautiousness
• a chronic inner pressure to use every minute productively

By my definition, someone is obsessive if his or her personality is predominantly colored by traits from this family - in any combination.  Many of these traits, when they aren't exaggerated or rigid, are valuable qualities.  It's hard to imagine someone succeeding in our society today without some degree of self-discipline, for example, or some desire to work hard and avoid errors.  But some people are "too perfect."  The obsessive traits in their personality are so dominant and inflexible that these virtues actually cause a host of problems.

<snip> I see how unaware most obsessives are that they're harming themselves; they recoil from any hint that their heavy burdens could be self-imposed.  Most have grown up believing that you can never be too careful, hardworking, thorough, prepared or organized.  In fact, they're often proudest of the very traits that cause them the most harm.

The book goes on to tell stories about people coming to see the doctor for physical symptoms, or because a partner insisted they get help, not because the Perfectionists recognized any problem with their lifestyle or attitudes.  It tells about Laura, who took on a crushing workload, refused to delegate tasks, and felt she had to be all things to all people.  About Raymond, a workaholic surgeon who wouldn't open up about his own feelings, bullied his wife and passed judgment on everything from her cooking to her political opinions, and then was heartbroken when she embarked on an affair because she felt lonely and unloved.

***

I can relate to Raymond's wife.  When my ex b-f would cry, I would reach out my arms to hold him, and he would either barely tolerate it, or shrug me off.  When I would have a bad day or bad dream, he would never spontaneously hold me or ask me to talk it out.  Sometimes when I specifically asked for it, he would hold me or let me talk about some feelings; other times even when I asked he'd turn me down, or give me a short, wooden hug.  It's very hard not to take that kind of emotional rejection personally.



from Andrew Petro - Creative Commons

 Everyone I've met on chat boards can tell a story about a couch/car/bed that took years to purchase, because the Perfectionist had to get the right one.  No matter how old, broken, uncomfortable or the old one was.  (2+ years for our couch.)  About frugality beyond making sense, about traumatic scenes because a routine may have been interrupted.  The horror! 

And the rules, the rules, the rules!  Almost everyone has a story of the Crazy Rules. 

Demand-Resistance and demand sensitivity - there will be more on that to follow, but even a perceived demand may meet with an automatic no.  (For example, many partners resent doing something for Valentines' Day, because they feel it's expected of them by society, whether or not their partner has asked for special treatment, and then exhibit resentment to their partners for the implied "demand.")  There's a lot of withholding of feelings that goes on, of not feeling trusted or supported.

Checking for fleas again:  I'm frugal, for the most part (I do use every fragment of paper on my steno pads!) but will not, as many Perfectionists do, eat dicey leftovers to save a few dollars.  The potential cost of getting sick and missing work, of having to go to the doctor or emergency room, to my way of thinking, outweighs the pain of throwing away fifty cents worth of food that might still be good.

I do tend to reflexively take the devil's advocate position, which is certainly an oppositional trait.  Hmmm.  I believe in following rules when they make sense, but don't believe any rules are always right.  One should obey the speed limit, for example, but what if you've got somebody in your car in dire straits and you're rushing her to the hospital?  I do feel that pressure to be productive all the time, but I also make myself take down time, and I'm learning not to feel quite so guilty about it.

What your flea count?  Do you have a furniture purchase from hell story?

Tell me about it in the comments.

Bowling for Babies

So, after a life where everything I wanted to do was on the back burner, I am fighting not to put everything on the front burner, all at the same time. 


Chicago Public Library
I don't know what the cornice is supposed to be, nor do I
quite "get" the button-like things.  However, it's a
LIBRARY, therefore, it is AWESOME.

 Anonymous suggested on Wolf Woman or Hungry Hungry Hippo that I create a vision board, and since I take every comment quite seriously (please don't advise me to go jump off a bridge, 'kay?), that idea took over my brain this past week or so.

So, in between things I had to do - like, oh, paying work, washing a load of undies - I've been planning my vision board.  I looked up and cut out headers from the Los Angeles Times Book Section, and the New York Times Book Section,  in that special Gothic font they use, since I hope to be listed there someday.  I printed out a picture I'd taken of the Chicago Public Library with its cool cornices.

I printed out pictures of great places I've been to which I'd like to return someday like Zion National Park, the Grand Canyon, the Library of Congress (stunning, beautiful, breathtaking) in Washington, DC, the Sierra Mountains of California and the Milwaukee Lakeside Art Museum and south-central Pennsylvania where I spent my teen years.  I printed out pictures from my visit to Queen Califia's Magic Circle in Escondido, where, if you're not already high (I wasn't), you'll feel like you're tripping on psychotropic drugs.

Queen Califia's Magic Circle Garden
Escondido, California



La Sagrada Familia via Wikimedia Commons
Under construction since 1862


I printed out pictures of places I haven't yet been but really want to go, The Tower of London and Hever Castle (where Anne Boleyn grew up) and The Alhambra and Stonehenge and Versailles.  I printed out a picture of La Sagrada Familia for my vision board, because if ever there's an emblem of "Dream Big," it's La Sagrada Familia, still under under construction after more than 100 years, like a medieval church.) 

I printed out pictures about mindfulness and body image, including one of ME and this wonderful set of sculptures from the Getty.

This is NOT me - just one of a billion other skinny girls.  I put the
picture of ME and these sculptures at the middle of my vision board.  Around
them I wrote, "Changing Woman" (from the Native American tradition)
Learn to Love.... the Skin I'm in
Every Size has its beauty... Every shape has a function
Right now I am beautiful

And I printed a jillion pictures of BABIES.  I dream of babies, a lot.  A Witch's Book of Dreams, which I bought following a recommendation from my as-yet-unmet friend Thalia, says that "Baby" represents "giving birth to an infant can represent a new aspect of oneself, a brand new idea, or a creative project.  A Divine Child or Wonder Baby, one who walks and talks, is an archetypal image signifying the birth of the divine within us, the new son/sun of hope emerging.  Very positive."

So, I printed pictures of babies for my vision board.  I printed pictures of babies crawling, up stairs and hills.  Of toddlers hugging each other, giggling, chortling with glee.  I printed pictures of a toddler leading on his younger sister, thinking "Original Release + Sequel."  I printed a picture of myself, about 3-4 years old, sticking out my tongue for the camera.  Of a young girl in a skirt made of rainbow colored scarves.  Of babies white, African, Asian.  Of identical twins (one of my favs) in t-shirts bearing the legends "Copy" (on one shirt) and "Paste" (on the other.)

And I had a lot of fun doing this, but, if you haven't done the math yet, totally ran out of space on my vision board.   When I stopped at the store after work on Friday in the pouring rain, to buy (what seemed then) a huge piece of foam board, I was naively thinking, "Well, I guess I can cut this in half."

I didn't need to cut it in half.   I could have done 20 vision boards, and not had enough space for all the picture I had printed, for all the things I still want to write down and print on it.

I did the cutting and pasting all day yesterday, putting aside an uncountable number of pictures that there was simply no room for, and then, last night, I did dream about babies.  About needing to feed my babies.  About trying to keep track of all my babies (a hint, perhaps, that I'm becoming overextended?)

And I dreamed about bowling. 


I dreamt about trying to bowl, and that I kept getting stopped by.. something.  I would get ready to bowl and I was interfering with somebody else.  I got placed into my own lane and the power was off, or the pin-setter didn't work.  Everybody that I had been trying to bowl with was long since finished, and it would have been real easy to say, "Okay, I quit, this isn't happening for me today," yet for some unknown reason, I was determined to battle on.  I went to bowl and the holes in my ball were too small - it wasn't my ball at all - or the finger holes were too big.  I went to the service window to try to get my ball and they were still working on cleaning it.

I checked a Witch's Book of Dreams, but there were no answers there.  Apparently, either witches don't bowl (and here I was, about to send in my check and membership application!)  Or, at least, they don't generally dream of bowling.  My Dreamer's Dictionary for the 21st Century did offer a clue:

Dreams of bowling symbolize focus and concentration on a goal.  <aha!  like, perhaps, my much-neglected novel?!>  They may suggest that you will strike it rich if you engage in life and get out of your rut.

Well, I am not sure I want to "strike it rich."  I would like to be able to earn enough from my writing to quit my day job, and buy a nice house (although my solo apartment is ten times better than living with nitpicking OCPD ex-b-f.) 


So, there!  to life, expectations, and
dirty undies!


But obviously, my subconscious was trying to send me a message, so, for the first part of the day (after yoga and breakfast, of course) I worked on my much-neglected novel.  I rewrote the first chapter to add more Heart, per The Editor Devil.  And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th.

I feel good about the work I did on the novel.  And on the vision board.  And on my dirty undies.

Even if I have left much undone, I have also made much progress.  How about you?