The Dizzy Woman
I’m waiting at the end of the street for my husband to pick me up and my daughter says “look mom!” and points to the right. I see a car pulled over and a blonde woman face down on the side of the road. I quickly go over to see if she’s okay. She looks dead but there doesn’t appear to have been an accident or anything. As I approach I see there is another woman with her. I go up to her and ask if the blonde woman is okay and she explains that the blonde woman feels very dizzy and can’t stand up and this has been happening lately. The blonde woman looks pale and sad and scared and like she’s not breathing very much. Then the scene changes and we’re not on the side of the road anymore but sitting on the back patio of a big house. We are waiting for help to arrive for this woman. Two mental health counselors march up trailed by four or five interns in fancy professional clothing. The interns remind me of med students or residents who have some book knowledge but no actual experience and somehow seem to feel confident and self-important. They don’t actually know what they are doing but they seem confident that they can fix the patient and make her better and this false confidence is actually because of their lack of experience. When they arrive I leave the woman, in part because there is no room for me—it’s too crowded with the interns. I feel relieved that someone is there to help her but also know that they will probably just medicate her and reinforce her sense of helplessness and dependency on others to tell her what’s going on with her. The scene jumps ahead and I am walking on a beach with my husband and telling him about this woman and how the therapists and the interns showed up. We are walking back to somewhere and there is a moment of confusion about which path to take. My husband thinks we should take one path but I point to where we’re trying to go and tell him we need to take the other path.
(If this was your dream what would it be about? Comment below beginning with "If it was my dream..." or "In my imagined version of this dream...")
© Genevieve Camp, Expansion of Consciousness, magazine collage, 5” x 8”
