Dreaming about deprivation

I have been feeling a little guilty lately about not participating in a new self-care challenge.  I had every intention to do so.  I went to three different bookstores to buy Cheryl Richardson’s book The Art of Extreme Self-Care, and I made sure to read the first chapter on time so that I could blog about it.  The first chapter was about deprivation, and the goal was to begin writing about all of the many ways I feel deprived in my life.  Thirty minutes into this exercise, I found myself crying and my husband and I got into an argument.  I found that what I was writing about was something that I felt was too personal for me to share online.  So, I decided against the challenge this time around.  Interestingly though, I woke up this morning from a dream that told me that I am still holding onto the thought of deprivation, even five days after the start of the challenge.

I dreamed that my cousin drove off of a cliff and into the Pacific Ocean.  I jumped in to rescue him screaming, “What were you thinking!”  I swam out to him, and he was hugging a large, glass frame against his torso, almost floating on it.  I asked him, “What is that?” and he was nearly speechless, almost shell shocked.

He answered, “I needed to do this.  It was part of the challenge.”

I brought him to a nearby sand bar, and pried the glass frame from him, rubbing off the debris the way one might rub fog off of a mirror.  At first glance, I saw that it looked like a “to-do” list, written in a type of calligraphy that you’d expect the Ten Commandments to be written in.  And at the very top, in large, bold, black letters read the first word, “DEPRIVATION.”

The moment I saw this word, a large red boat that almost looked like a London double-decker bus rushed towards us through the fog with a large flood light shining directly on us at full speed, too fast to stop.  I thought it might run us over and I felt scared and disoriented.  And then, I woke up.

I told a friend of mine today about the challenge, about how much I had wanted to participate and about how much trouble I was having with it.  When I told her about this strange dream of mine, her immediate response was that I should write about it.

I’m not great at dream analysis, and I honestly don’t know why my cousin was in the dream or what he represented.  I do know though that the challenge of delving into all of the ways I feel deprived this month felt as terrifying to me as driving off of a cliff, originally hoping that sticking with the challenge of examining the deprivation in my life would carry me through.  I know that I don’t know what to do with this word—deprivation—and that after an initial examination of how deprivation works (or doesn’t work) in my life I felt a little lost and confused.  Now what do I do with this information?  Cheryl Richardson says to sit with it, to examine it and continue to explore it through the month and that the answers will gradually come.  Initially, I didn’t trust this to be the case, thinking that first day that I might need a therapist to help me work it all out.  But, even after disengaging from the challenge, I am still dreaming about deprivation and that word is somehow sticking with me, at the forefront of my mind.  Maybe this is a sign that I really am working on this challenge after all, or that since opening the door of deprivation’s role in my life that this challenge is really working on me? Maybe that's where the word "extreme" comes into the picture, since it's called "The art of extreme self-care", rather than just "self-care?"