Zero

Last night I had a dream.

I was in a room full of people I knew and I was standing up front giving an object lesson. I held in my hand a Zero food bar. Now, I don't know if this product even exists. The salespitch of a Zero food bar was that it had zero calories, and yet it was "food". I called someone up to the front for a demonstration. I asked her to quack like a duck and waddle like a duck, which she did. Clearly, she was for our intents and purposes, easily identifiable as a duck. Then I "took away" her quack and waddle and asked her to just stand there. Now did she seem like a duck? The point that I was making in my dream was that food is supposed to nourish us, give us energy. Calories are energy. If we take the calories away, then how will our bodies recognize what we put into them as food?

When I woke up from the dream, I clearly knew in my heart that that was not the point of my dream.

I've had a rough time of life lately. I feel like I just don't get anything right, and then to make things worse, the things I get wrong I feel like I'm not allowed to talk about. That is an incredibly frustrating position to be in, especially when one of my primary coping mechanisms is writing. So instead, I shrink up and criticize myself for this or that, try to eliminate this part of my personality and that part, try to not be this way or that way. Say different, act different, be different---anything other than what I am, and that just leaves me feeling even lonelier, even more confused. Like a shell, an empty shell.

With all of me gone, I feel like a zero. Unrecognizable even to myself. And yet, like calories, I'm still trying to figure out if I'm needed, purposeful, nourishing, or if I'm just misunderstood and condemned.

So, I think that was the point.

Otherwise, that's kind of a weird dream, don'tcha think?