Self Portrait (Cutts, 1999)
Nicole’s Story: Introduction
I had finished grad school, back from L.A. and back in my parent’s home trying to figure out what to do next. My doctorate was in clinical psychology but I pretty much had decided that I did not want to be a therapist anymore. It was 1999 and I was on a quest to figure out my “Purpose”. One night I had an interesting dream. I dreamed that there was a creature that was sort of half butterfly and half reptile. It had pink wings and a bright green lizard-like body. I had caught this creature and for some reason was trying to stuff it in a small clear plastic bag (like a sandwich baggie). In order to get her in the bag I had to fold her wings breaking them with a little tiny crack. It was an awful feeling, stuffing that pretty little creature in that bag! Why was I doing that? When I woke up it seemed pretty clear that the butterfly was me and that I was trying to stuff myself in a space that I did not fit and was hurting myself in the process. The space I was trying to stuff myself in was the space created by the expectations of my parents and society. I was feeling stuck because rather than figuring out what I truly wanted to be I was trying to compromise to please others. Once I realized this I decided to free myself of this and just really go about the business of figuring out who I really was and what I really wanted to do with my life. What happens next is a much longer story…
(first posted 10.3.09)
