Had a dream last night.

[valis2]

No, not one of those awesome dreams where Wolverine shows up and snogs you silly.

I dreamt that I was at an ex-boyfriend's house, and while I was there I got a phone call from my mom. She started going on and on about how she had seen my resumé, and she began to read parts of it, mentioning how amazing it was that I had developed a partnership with a master jade carver and patented a method of taking beautiful pictures of jade sculptures. I had no idea what she was talking about. She continued, saying, "You can do anything with this skill! I never knew that you were so talented in photography! You need to keep going with this" and I could sense her aggravation and pride. On one hand she was angry that I had this great talent and I wasn't pursuing it aggressively enough, yet on the other she was so relieved that I had this great talent and could keep bread on the table for the rest of my life and not have to worry financially if I wanted to.

In the dream, I suddenly realized that she had virtual_gravy's resumé, not mine, and I said, "No, wait, that's someone else's writeup, not mine! I can't take pictures like that...I don't have that kind of equipment, training, or talent!" And then my mom was so disappointed, and suddenly I was back to my normal work-at-three-things-four-if-you-count-eBay-to-make-ends-meet self in her eyes, and we said good-bye, and in the dream I started to cry. But my ex-boyfriend was there, with his parents, and then I had to concentrate on them, and they were explaining that they now had some sort of mapping system in their truck that they had never realized they had, and it just went off to oddsville from there.

So I woke up eventually, and of course the dream wouldn't leave my head. Growing up, my mom always did this thing to people (I think because she's a bit insecure) about telling them that she's awful at something and they're better than she is at it, and she does it with all sorts of things, whether it be drawing, or taking pictures, or self-control for dieting, or whatever. "I can't even draw a smiley face" is the idea when someone says they like to paint. It's a way of making the other person feel at ease and also a bit flattered, while saying the negative thing about oneself to take any pressure off. I understand why she does it, but one of the side effects is, over years of hearing this, you start to adopt the same viewpoint, and it fosters this bizarre sense of envy. As you're saying it you think "Wah! I can't do anything at all!" After all, everyone does something better than you. It's taken years for me to understand that this isn't the sort of conversational technique I really want to have, and that of course people do things better than you can, someone is always faster/smarter/cuter/etc. So I feel pretty happy at this point that I'm able to compliment people without any weird little repressed bit of me resenting the hell out of it. I'm so glad I'm no longer a teenager.

That's why this dream really got to me, I think. Besides the usual feelings of inferiority and I've-screwed-up-my-life-beyond-belief, I thought I was beyond this weird jealousy creature, and then it rears its ugly head and makes me remember that I don't have this great talent or life on an easy microwaveable platter, I still have to put together the ingredients myself. That's not to say that virtual_gravy does, of course! People usually get to where they're going with hard work, but somehow it would be so nice to just know that you have a talent for something and follow it. I don't know what I'm saying at this point, just that I think there is this whole idea in my mother's head that somehow has gone to my head that if you just have this one thing you do very well, you can hitch your wagon to it and keep going and as long as you keep working you're set. And I wish sometimes I could figure out which one it is, because I usually feel not like I do one thing very well, but a bunch of useless things well, and it's very hard to figure it all out.

Comments

[valis2.livejournal.com]

:) Thanks, sweetie.