It's been tricky disposing of my victims' bodies!
But at least I figured out who the victims were ...
I’ve had this recurring dream where I’m having enormous trouble secretly disposing of dead bodies. I don’t know how they died, but I’m pretty sure I killed them.
At least the dead-body dream is far less frequent that the one where I’m homeless. In these dreams, I’m urgently trying to find somewhere to live, and/or having huge trouble moving out of an existing place - as in, the place is a mess, and too much stuff to pack in too little time.
However, as unpleasant as these homeless dreams are, at least they don’t involve dead bodies.
There’s several challenges in the dead-body dreams. Aside from the obvious issue that I’m a murderer, my biggest problem is the bodies won’t stay buried.
One dream I can clearly remember is quite typical. I’d buried two bodies next to my grandmothers water tank. Unfortunately the tank was leaking, waterlogging the soil, and the bodies kept rising to the surface. Like someone out of The Sopranos, I was desperately trying to pile more soil on top, equally desperately hoping no one would notice the stench. I had a foreboding it wasn’t going to end well.
This morning, I mentioned these recurring dreams to my partner, wondering out loud how many people I had murdered in a previous life.
And then it hit me.
Those bodies are parts of me!!!
Only recently, I’ve been shocked to realize how much of myself I had suppressed over the years - those shadow parts of me that were sources of shame and guilt.
[I talked about that in this post You know that thing you did - that thing you hope no one ever finds out about? [In which I disclose the shadow side of my sex habits, and explain my decision to write (week)daily Substack newsletters ...]
But I also suppressed what some term; ‘light shadows’ like fun and ease - for decades.
Today, I did some art for the first time in forever.
Vitally importantly, it was just for fun.
I have had (please note the past tense) a bad habit of trying to monetize fun, such as my art. There was a workaholic part of me that felt fun in itself was not a legitimate reason to do art. I needed to monetize it to justify the time.
Not that monetizing art is wrong - at all - but for me, now, it is. As soon as I start worrying about whether a piece of art is commercially viable - when I start forcing the process to rush the outcome - voila! - all the fun is sucked out of it. What was fun is transformed into a chore.
A tactical detail: I really wanted to use acrylic paint today, but the set up and clean up felt off-putting. So, rather than doing no art, I used oil pastels instead.
I also removed the plastic tray from the pastels and mixed them up. Then, to choose a color, I closed my eyes, spun the tray around, and picked one from the pile.
That was fun.
No more trying to bury my own body parts. No wonder they kept trying to surface!
Re the homeless dream, I figured out - at an intellectual level - what that meant several years ago.
And that meaning was: home is where the heart is <3
However, it can take a while for our deep heart-knowing to catch up with our shallow intellectual understanding.
There’s a Brene Brown quote on ‘belonging’ I love:
[Belonging] is not something we achieve or accomplish with others; it's something we carry in our heart.
Once we belong thoroughly to ourselves and believe thoroughly in ourselves, true belonging is ours.
We have to stop looking for validation outside of ourselves - and start validating ourselves.
I’m currently reading Walking Home, Sonia Choquette’s moving account of walking the Camino Trail in search of inner peace. She’s on the verge of divorcing her husband, Patrick, and is filled with despair and rage and exhaustion.
But suddenly she realizes the truth: “It isn’t that Patrick didn’t love me. It’s that I didn’t love me, then blamed him.”
This morning, I was fuming - only a little - over my long-suffering partner. I thought, it would be nice if he told me I was beautiful. Nano-seconds later, I realized the truth - when have I ever told myself I’m beautiful?!
It’s time to stop blaming others for the impossible task of not meeting our needs.
It’s time to stop rejecting and start embracing all of our parts - the parts that are ashamed, guilty, hurt, greedy, needy, selfish, demanding, fun-loving, joyful etc.
When we fully belong to ourselves, then true belonging is ours.
What about you?
I’d love to hear in the comments what you are doing to meet your own needs …
Want further reading?
4 ways I come up with loads of topics for my (week)daily newsletters ...
How often should you do a behavior to create a habit?
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