Two nights ago I dreamt I was sixteen again, mingling with friends in the parking lot of a Starbucks that was next to a Cold Stone Creamery in a strip mall right off the highway. This is a thing I did often as a teenager. In real life, not dream life, I’d sit shotgun in my best friend’s old Land Rover, her five-foot frame peering over the wheel as she maneuvered her boat-sized SUV around clusters of teens shuffling across the lot. Then, I’d glom onto a clique of kids and we’d laugh…I think? And gossip…I think? I think I was likable…? but I don’t remember really…because I barely remember being a kid. Whatever I was…I wasn’t there for it, dissociating until I got back in the boat-car with my best friend where we’d argue about who introduced whom to Ben Folds as we bounced over speed bumps and down the parking lot driveway.
In dream world I am in a different car with a different friend. The details are accurate to my life as a 16 year old at first, but then the scenery turns wispy, like a hologram of reality. As my friend and I drive toward the Starbucks next to the Cold Stone in a strip mall right off the highway, a cluster of teens floats toward the driver seat window. We dont flinch, floating is ordinary in this world. A blurry faced boy crouches down and asks for a ride home. We agree to take him. In the jumpy, jumbled way dreams progress, he is suddenly in the drivers seat. My friend sits beside him and I’m behind her. We are cruising, alarmingly fast, down a neighborhood street. He is no longer our peer, but a middle aged man. He is hairy and his eyes are wide with adrenaline. My whole body lights up with fear. We are in grave danger. My friend, meanwhile, is cool, calm, collected. No alarm bells for her. She is bopping to techno that is the sonic version of a high speed chase as if it’s Carly Rae Jepson. I tap her on the shoulder and signal that I am going to jump out of the car. She looks confused and then - I do it! I open the door and I roll right out! And somehow, despite the impossible physics of it, I open her passenger door and retrieve her from the moving vehicle. We are saved! We have escaped a kidnapping! An abduction! Because of me, my instinct and heroic bravery! I look over to her gleefully, in celebration. But, she is PISSED! “What the hell!” her face says. She is fuming! She thinks I’m insane. Her car is gone! HOW COULD I ABANDON THE CAR?!
Then..I am flying around…? I am dragging her behind me as we flee some continued abstract threat that she perceives as totally harmless! She is griping on about her car and I am desperate to demonstrate that I have saved her!
In the weeks leading up to this dream, I ran myself ragged with my own people pleasing tendencies. I’d taken my kids to Houston and - per usual - attempted the impossible task of squeezing in one-on-one time with every single friend and family member. I twisted my kids’ schedule to accommodate everyone else’s. I kept hearing myself say, “Yes! We’ll make it work! ” “Yes! we can bring by dinner!” “Yes! What’s easiest for you?!” “Yes! I’m happy to help!” YES. YES. YES! The offers poured out of me like a faucet that keeps running even when the sink is full, even as it’s overflowing!
And then..my kids got sick. And very contagious. And not only did I fail at pleasing everyone, I really pissed them off. We’d unknowingly exposed grandparents, great grandparents, cousins, and a newborn baby (!!!) to hand foot and mouth. And now I felt sick too, with guilt and anxiety. But quickly my people pleasing got right back to work!
“I’m SO sorry!”
“We didn’t know they were sick!”
“They weren’t showing symptoms at the time!”
“We would never intentionally expose you and your family.”
“Can we drop off dinner?”
“How are you all doing?”
“Is everyone feeling okay? I’m checking in!”
Behind each nicety was a desperation to be back in good standing. A feeling that I’d fallen out of favor that sent me pleading for forgiveness for something that I’m not sure I could have prevented. Meanwhile, I was upstairs at my parents house. Taking care of two sick kids. Which was totally fine, but felt like some kind of time out. There were scolding text messages, phone calls to express disappointment, some truly unnecessary dramatics that really sent my people pleasing into overdrive.
Almost two years ago, my second daughter was hospitalized at two weeks old because of a virus my older daughter brought home from school. We did not want to be the cause of this experience for people we love so dearly. But, as the days past and everything turned out fine, I saw how urgently I’d taken responsibility, how eagerly I’d begged for forgiveness, and how effectively I’d shut down my own feelings of anger and abandonment, (of being exiled to the upstairs, ha!) to make sure everyone else was okay, that my apologies were accepted, I’d been absolved, we were good good good.
In the midst of all this my husband and I got a little rage-y about how exhausting it can be to take the high road, to be the bigger person, to accept responsibility even when you want to get real petty! We find ourselves in this role of staying even-keeled and level-headed when everyone else is spinning out - lol - too often. And lately, we have both felt burned the f out. I think I’m coming to understand boundaries…that we need them…groundbreaking! Maybe I was right to drag my dream friend from the moving car driven by the demented boy-man-ghost, or maybe I wasn’t, but I can’t shape her perception of me as good for doing it. Her perception of me is not mine to manage. She is pissed about her missing car and that’s okay.
“I understand where you are coming from,” is a beautiful phrase, and made more beautiful when it’s extended inward too. How can my understanding of other people’s hurt, anger, disappointment coexist with my own, instead of subsuming it?
I have found myself in other people’s houses a lot lately. Visiting family. Playdates in neighbors’ backyards. Sharing a meal in a new friend’s kitchen. Other people’s living spaces (IRL, not sterile instagram interiors) has the potential to widen our lens like visiting a new country where we are immersed in a new culture, new scenery, values, and traditions. To see inside someone’s home is to see inside their private life: the clutter on their kitchen counter, the office nook catty-cornered to their bed, the screen door that squeaks on its hinges. Even our neighbors, our friends, our family are living inside their own lives, their own histories, and stories, and bodies, and minds. We are all having unique experiences, bumping up against each other along the way. I am learning not to bump, and not to blend either. To hold my own space when I am in yours.
With love,
Stephanie
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I love your writing! Thank you for sharing your heart and soul! ❤️❤️
I feel this. I did the whole people pleasing thing to try and get my husbands family to accept me and my kids. No matter what I did it was never good enough for them. Since he passed away, they have left me alone. Just goes to show I was never going to be accepted and I feel like a huge burden has been lifted off me. I have learned who my true friends and family are now and they are the only ones I put myself out for. It’s mutual now.