On Time

Last night I dreamt again that I was in the weeds at The Newsroom Cafe. In the weeds, in server speak, means slammed, which means: Oh crap, I cannot keep up. I am drowning. Can someone cover my section? Can someone drop this ketchup off to table 13? Can someone tell table 19 I will be with them in a minute? Can someone help me?

I have not worked at that restaurant in well over a decade but it still visits me at night, just as the dreams about not finishing college (I didn’t) do, and the ones where I’m driving my first car, a stick-shift 1988 Volkswagen Fox.

These dreams are classic anxiety dreams. Except on the rare occasion where I can remember how to shift gears and I find it oddly relaxing, the other times I am driving but I have forgotten how to drive stick. (It’s like those dreams where you go to school naked.)

In last night’s dream, the restaurant had changed the system of how they numbered the tables and I kept messing them up. In the dream, it was the me of now as opposed to the me who worked there then (as if we are separate people). I kept telling the customers upon their irritation with me, I wrote a national bestseller. I kept repeating it like a mantra. Like they cared. They did not care. They just wanted their Ultimate Maui Veggie Burgers with grilled onions. I was standing at the computer in my dream, putting in orders and the tickets were flying out of the machine all over the floor. The food runners were delivering all the food to the wrong tables because I couldn’t keep them straight and screaming at me.

My husband came in to kiss me to wake me, as he does, ever so gently. I opened my eyes and looked at him and fell back into the dream. Anytime I dream of my dead father (which is sadly very rare) I try and get back into the dream after waking—to no avail. I have never been able to find my way back into my dreamscapes except for this. I drifted right back into the chaos of people yelling at me and checks flying around my head and mixing people’s credit cards up and the guys in the kitchen giving me a hard time. In the middle of it all, I stopped to order my own food. A Tuna Deluxe without the rice. In a to go box. I remember the entire menu.

In my dream I kept telling people about my memoir. They didn’t ask. Billie Eilish came in and I didn’t realize it was her until she gave me her credit card. It made me feel old. Even in my dream.

I kept telling the customers about my book as if I needed it to deem me worthy. See? I am not just a server! I silently begged them to realize.

And then, I worried about what they thought of me. I imagined each one thinking about why I had been so successful and was now back here at the restaurant, again? They must think I am a loser, I thought to my dream-self after I took their order and told them about my book. (Obviously Covid wasn’t a thing in my dream because we were inside and it was crowded and not one person had a mask on. I wouldn’t have been able to lip read if they had and maybe my dream self knew that. Although I don’t think I am deaf in my dreams.)

Here’s the thing: I know these are cliche anxiety dreams, but what I really thought about after I finally woke wasn’t the anxiety but how much shame I carried in my dream.

I am launching a course next month called Shame Loss. The tagline is this: Forget weight loss! Let’s talk about shame loss. As I replayed the dream in my mind I recalled how I kept selling myself to the customers. How I had to let them know I had indeed been up to something. I created something! I did not end up wasting all my life as I thought I would! It wasn’t until the customers acknowledged me in the dream that I moved on, and this is probably why I got so slammed in the first place. I was waiting for each person’s approval. The funny thing is, in the dream, no one cared. And I kept waiting. Like I did in my real life for so many years. Please tell me I am worthy?

I got that job when I was 21 as a summer job. I stayed for almost fourteen years. I was going to take a semester off of NYU between junior and senior year, and well, we know how that went. In the dream I was concerned with what people thought of me. How I had been a successful author and life coach and all the things the world tells me I am but somehow had to end up back where I started. As if there was shame in it.

There is no shame in it, I found myself yelling on my walk later to no one. If I were to go back now (I can’t because it’s long closed) I would not tell anyone what I did for a living besides waiting tables. I would hold that close to my chest because it would not affect who I was in the world in any way, and the moment I start to feel like my accomplishments or what others think of me determine my worth, I am screwed. As are you. I would hold it close to me and realize that all those years ago, when I worked there and hated myself so very much because I thought I had nothing to show for myself, that I was the same me. I am her. I mistakenly thought that my job or looks or weight or achievements would make me worthy. I was ashamed that I was a server for so many years because it must have meant that I somehow failed at what I had set out to do.

The truth is I never set out to do anything. I did not know what I wanted and that is okay. There is no shame in that. There is no shame in not knowing. There is no shame in finding your way. At any age.

I would go back and wait tables now. Granted, my hearing loss had progressed so much in the last decade that it would be like a comedy show watching me try to understand what folks were ordering. I would mishear everything. And all the years of wearing Steve Madden platform shoes on concrete because I hated how short I was (plus having a kid) caught up with me, so back hurts after I stand for too long. I would have to work short shifts, but I would love it. I would do what I was born to do: connect with people.

I would go in for my shift and be so utterly free of having to defend why I was still there, what I was doing besides this, where did I really want to be?

I can’t go back in time but I can offer compassion to the younger me who felt she had no value in the world, who was riddled with shame all the time. Shame from feeling like she killed her father by yelling ‘I hate you’ and having him die right after those words. Shame at losing her hearing and feeling broken for it. Shame at being depressed. Shame at taking antidepressants. Shame at leaving college. Shame at being a server. Shame at not having money. I can offer compassion and the firm knowing that shame doesn’t belong in our bodies even though it will tell us it does. And I can remind myself every day, moving forward, even though I can’t go back in time.

The dream last night rattled me a bit because I thought I worked through all of this shame stuff but, the subconscious is a trickster. Is there a part of me that thinks I am not where I should be right now? That I should be farther along? That still craves validation from others?

Yes.

Why? Because I am human. Yup, the name of my book is On Being Human and although I work every single day to not let what I call the Inner Asshole be the boss of me, I sometimes fail spectacularly. Even in my dreams.

My next book is called Right On Time so naturally my unconscious self is like, Oh Girl, just when things are getting good, we are going to drop the other shoe. Gay Hendricks calls this your upper limit problem. My dream-self seemed to be saying, You are not right on time. You should have had another kid. Another book out by now. Your life figured out! Come on! How can you be back here waiting tables yet again? You, loser! You are not right on time. You are behind! See, you can’t even keep up with your tables.

There it is. You can’t keep up. Ah, the shame in that feeling of I can’t keep up.

I will never again think there is shame in asking for help to keep up. And then ask yourself this: keeping up with what? With who?

There is no shame in not being able to keep up because there is no one to keep up with (except the Kardashians maybe?). And like my tattoo on my inner left forearm says: I got you. You ask for help. You offer help. Repeat cycle. Again and again. And may you remember, there is no timeline that isn’t imagined, that someone, somewhere in a bathrobe and a bag of pretzels didn’t make up. So make up your own timeline. And if you go back, or foreword, or back again, it’s okay. You are right on time, and you don’t need to defend who or where you are to anyone. Not even the angry customer waiting for their table.

All those years I wasted wanting to die when people would come in and say, You’re still here? as if it was a miracle or a magic trick. I would proudly say, Yes. Yes, I am still here. I have always been here. It is a miracle, isn’t it?