Stop, Thief!

I have had a couple of nice and quiet weeks lately where the stress level is low and things seem a thousand times more manageable than before. School is out for a month. Got a raise at work and am getting full time hours till school starts. Boyfriend and I have made up-- kissy, kissy, smoochie, smoochie. The weight hasn't gone sky high (although admittedly I haven't weighed myself in a month- I'm trying to go by how my clothes feel and right now only one pair of tight pants feel shitty on me). The house is in a general state of tidiness and I’m making an effort to keep up on it. I feel pretty good. The moods have stabilized and I feel in control for once.

But that doesn’t explain my weird dream this week. I found myself at my parents’ house late in the evening and I was completely freaking out because I had not noticed until nine o’clock at night that all my credit cards, checks and my driver’s license had been stolen from my purse. I was frantically scrambling around, trying to find the lost/stolen hotlines to get everything canceled but I couldn’t complete any of the calls. My fat fingers kept misdialing and punching extra numbers. Several times I looked at my phone and could see a thousand numbers and symbols punched in over and over again. I was totally losing it.

I woke up in a panic and it took almost a half an hour to calm myself down. I was sweating and panting. I was so sure that something was wrong that I walked around the apartment mentally cataloging things. Everything was in its place, the cats were watching me intently for any sign of their tuna breakfast, and the sun was coming up over the horizon like every morning. Nothing was wrong. Sigh…

But I couldn’t quite shake that panicky feeling. I mentioned it in therapy the other day, much to the sheer delight of my counselor (she likes talking about my dreams, especially the reoccurring ones). She asked me what I thought it meant. I wasn’t entirely sure. “If everything is going well, and I’m not as depressed as I have been this year, why am I alarming myself in my dreams so badly?” I wondered. “It probably has something to do with your identity”, she said. “You’re in a state of flux-- lots of changes are happening to you.” Ah, and the light bulb clicks on. Between the weight loss and having to face the fact that I might actually be a pretty person underneath all this fat, the end of college looming in the next year, a possible engagement sometime soon, a new place to live… there are many, many changes to deal with. And my identity is shifting with each new item.

Something has been stolen though. All those defensive tactics I use to distance myself from people, to keep myself lonely and fat and depressed, those are being stripped away from me every time I turn around. It’s not an easy process and I seem to be fighting it every step of the way. Last night the boyfriend turned to me and said I was the most beautiful woman he’s ever been with. My little Galaxy Quest guys immediately went into defense mode and gathered around the rational side of my brain in a sort of wicked tribal dance where they seemed to bless and curse those incoming thoughts at the same time. They each had their right hands up to their right ears, smashing their palms in tightly, while their left hands were simultaneously cupped to their left ears as they listened intently to what he was saying to me. I think they are just as confused as I am. My identity is being chipped away at by thieves everywhere. I should be happy but it’s a very scary experience to go through. How can I be the beautiful girl? It’s not in me, it never was. And yet, something is there that others see. Something is definitely there. I'm just not sure what it is yet. The thieves are stealing the outer layers and what I'm left with isn't exactly identifiable yet nor is it completely in one piece.