Reinventing Myself In The Elevator Pit: Oct. 22, 2008

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Personal reinvention is challenging and disruptive, but a good catharsis for one’s spirit, a motivator for the mind and body. I want to use words like “exhilarating” to describe the process. I would be lying, making the challenge seem like a cakewalk, when it’s fearful and death-defying.

via Flickr’s alfanhuiFor me, the reinvention process, comes about every eight years, nearly stripping away my existing identity and the props I’ve earned in this version of myself. The journey is similar to peeling the layers of an onion, including the waterworks. That faucet is just a drip these days, but decades ago, it was a gusher.

Today I never worry that I will arrive at my core, discovering nothing there.

My one-time torrentially wet, dark and nebulous heart is calm and rich with live tissue.

In Memoriam

Allowing myself to go into free fall at this moment, I land on the concept of the Inner Child. The majority of my reading has been Jungian, with a focus on the unconscious mind, not the tiny, mighty person who was me.

These stops on my psychological ocean passage pull me closer still to my internal essence, the vortex that is this young, caring Minnesota girl with big dreams. She is my favorite version of myself, except for the hair.

This Inner Child waltzed into my conscious life a few years ago, although she lived in my dreams long before, as an older cousin or sister. The two of us had a very tight relationship, in which she was the truth serum in my life, a confidante who saw me truly, without judging.

We walked through some very challenging dreams together, and always ended up flying higher and higher. I give you this rather aimless Inner Child music, in case you want to reflect on your own Inner Child. They have a lot to say, you know.

Psychological literature focuses on our evolution from childhood to adulthood, moving towards a psychological state called self-realization. I only assume that this process accelerates with age, knowing that there is some finite pressure to get “it” right with oneself.

I returned this morning to my Pretty Woman writing. There’s little for me to add there, except that I understand the depths to which some of us struggle, trying to prevent the events of our lives from defining us.

Your private notes to me confirm that writing about my own experiences has a benefit. I write as much for you as for me.

Defined By Dreamstate

Dreams are amazing. Mine come aggressively, brimming with information and life lessons that demand my full attention and remembering. These dreams are branded on my brain, and I relieve them frequently, like being with good friends.

My last profound dream came on Thanksgiving weekend, 2004, at the home of someone I was dating.

This warm, caring man came into my life at the end of a challenging year, in which I took up the camera, had my NIA dance breakthrough, became a total gym rat, and saw my career ignite again.

Offering me what I always said I wanted, I replied “it’s not enough”.

Where The Earth Doesn’t Move

I’ve read that when you fall in your dreams, you’re dead, if you hit bottom.

Luckily, I fly in my dreams and never remember one of falling, except this one Thanksgiving night. Before I share my dream, a note of personal history is required.

When I was six-years old, my mother took me clothes shopping in Minneapolis. The real-life store had at least three floors, because I remember going up an escalator to the second floor.

Always an inquisitive kid, I wandered over to the elevator, and peered through the glass panes, down into the elevator shaft. The elevator car was overhead, leaving nothing but dangling ropes into the darkness.

I could not climb ropes as a young girl. Looking down into the shaft, I wondered how people slid down the cables, able to stop on the right floor.

Returning to my mom, as she completed her purchase, I headed for the escalator. When she called me back, moving towards the elevator, I froze, refusing to move.

Grabbing my arm, pulling me towards the elevator, she yelled at me for good reason. I was hysterical, pulling away from her, sitting down in the middle of the floor, clinging to the carpet with all my strength.

“Will you stop it!!!”, she hissed. People will think I’m trying to kill you.”

Let me just say that there was a lot of distrust between us.

In fact, I did think she was trying to kill me, making me slide down the ropes in the elevator shaft, to a certain death. I thought it was very clever of her … the perfect crime.

There was no negotiating these matters with mom, and she yanked me off the floor and towards the elevator.

At age six, I felt pretty embarrassed when the doors open, and I had a car to ride in. Anne does not like emotional scenes like the one above at any time. But I was fighting for my life that day.

My relationship with elevators went swimmingly, until one dropped half a floor in the Empire State Building, back in the late 80s. We got to know each other very well, suspended 25 floors above our deaths, an uneasy alliance of meaning-well caretakers, each dealing with the nightmare in our own way.

Snarky Dork at FlickrReturning to Thanksgiving 2004, I felt badly going to sleep that night, lying next to a good man who was offering me what I always wanted — strong family ties and loyalty.

“We” were not a “go” for me.

Over the course of my life, there are five or six dreams that have altered the course of my life and sense of self. This was the most dramatic one of all.

Gaining dream consciousness, I fell into an elevator shaft, plunging deeper and deeper towards my death. I didn’t scream or wake up, and accepted the fact that I would die.

Closer and closer I came to the bottom of the elevator pit, without fear. I remember thinking my landing would be hard and fast, and I wouldn’t suffer.

Sensing that the floor was a few feet away, everything changed.

A white netting stretched along the walls on all four sides of the shaft. “Oh my God” I gasped. “I’m falling into a safety net; I’m not dying!”

I remember seeing the movie Trapeze as a very young girl and being so full of anxiety that I hid down in the seats on the floor, rather than watch the movie.  

This vision of Trapeze was in my dream as I fell towards my dream death. How is it that these visual memories have such a profound impact on us, decades later! Also, I think there’s a bit more Freudian sexy ambivalence going on in my leaving the theater, than a fear of heights and not being caught, flying through the air.

Waiting Arms

In seconds, I had landed with my psychological parachute, bouncing in the net, then stopping with a pounding heart, in the bottom of my certain-death tunnel. I was safe, a survivor who would not only live, but flourish in the coming years.

Looking around me, I saw a trap-door in the wall, an exit out of the elevator shaft. Reaching for the black lever, I yanked open the top and bottom sheets of metal, and walked onto a picnic table.

Typing on her laptop was the girl I knew well, the one who dreamed of moving to New York and becoming a writer. She barely acknowledged me , she was so preoccupied.

In prior dreams, she was older, more my age, a dear friend and sisterly confidante.

This day, she was almost too busy to notice me. Looking up, she kept typing on her Mac Powerbook, with barely a nod, let alone a smile. We exchanged brief acknowledgements, as I walked across the table top, then stepped down to the bench, and onto the floor.

The moment was the most powerful one I’ve ever felt in my life. When this little girl and I looked at each other, there was nothing left to say.

Surviving the plunge into darkness, my life was filled with light. The dark to light vision remains very strong in my memory.

In case you think that I left her here, typing away at the picnic table, I took her home with me. A few months later, my cousin Jo sent me a group of photos, and there “she” was, exactly as she was in my dream, and also the day she was three.

My young friend lives on my night table, giving me advice regularly. when I’m confused. 

Her mature counsel is relevant on all matters, including my hair color. “You were born to be a blond,” she responds, when I bring up my disguise. “If I hadn’t lived this way so many years, I would consider a change myself.”

“It’s never too late to start a new chapter in your life,” I encourage the little me. “Don’t be like Ms. Majesty, so attached to decorum and royal obligations.”

“It’s enough for me to keep up with your inner roller coaster, Anne. Ms. Majesty and I — Mrs. Khaki Pants, too — we live vicariously through you, ready to pick up the pieces, or calling Robert, when you’re pushed too far onto the ledge. How can you rely on us, if we’re off twirling in some new direction? I’d say you need some grounding, my lady friend.”

“Besides, I have enough trouble keeping up with the name change, Anne. I don’t think I can take the ride as a blond.”

She’s probably right, my little buddy. Why is it that kids always say the darndest things! Anne