Deborah Lipp

So, I dreamed I was taking a cruise, by myself. I planned it carefully, it wasn’t one of those dreams where you show up somewhere and you realize you forgot to pack or by a plane ticket or something (I have those all the time).

I walk down the long cruise ship corridors looking for my room and I see the rooms are labeled “Single Gentlemen” (or something like that) and I think “Huh,” and I also think, “Well, I know this isn’t my corridor; got to find the women’s section.” Which I do, and go into my room, and there’s someone else’s stuff in it and the bed’s unmade and slept-in. Then a man shows up and says it’s his room. We both have room keys, so obviously it’s a screw-up on the ship. We go out in the corridor until we find a steward or something and she says she’ll get it straightened out, and they move him out.

So that’s weird. What does that mean?

Then I’m settling in my room and someone I know in real life, nice guy, married, one kid one on the way, very good-looking, comes up to me and kisses me very very hard. Like grabs my face and holds it so he can get the kiss in before I can protest. Which totally weirded me out, like, woke me up because damn, that’s weird. I hate that about dreams, that you can get all horny over someone you’d never consider in real life. Totally throws your day off.

So, I’m at an event, and I’m talking with this woman who had gastric bypass surgery, and we get on the subject of the psychological effects of massive weight loss on family. Her marriage is ending, and maybe that’s because of how much she’s changed, or because of the role her husband had her in and how that changed, or who knows? Anyway, we’re talking, and I say my sister had gastric bypass, and I talk a little about how Mom’s reaction to me has changed in the time since. Now, Mom was on me about my weight when I weighed a hundred pounds less than I do today, and when Roberta was much heavier than me. In fact, I clearly remember an incident in 1985 when I brought the Important Boyfriend home for the First Dinner With the Family, and she used the opportunity to say “Tsk, Deb, do you really need that?” when I took seconds on something. Which was so mortifying that I remember it twenty years later.

But it’s definitely shifted, partly because I am much heavier, but I started to notice that it’s partly because I’m the best available target now. And to give Mom credit (I was saying this in the conversation), she’s growing and learning, and recently she said something inappropriate about my weight and I said so and she said “You’re right” and backed off. So that was great.

So this woman comes up and says “Forgive me for intruding but I couldn’t help but overhearing…” and shares a moment with her own mom and their relationship about weight, and shares a fairly powerful insight, an incident that made it crystal clear that her mother’s issue was jealousy. Narcissism. That she saw her daughter’s weight only in relation to her own weight.

And I congratulated her on her insight and she said something like “That’s your mother’s issue too. It’s narcissism.” And I said, “No, in my case, that’s not it, but I appreciate how meaningful it was for you; in my case, it’s…” “No,” she cut me off, “It’s narcissism.”

“Everyone’s different, of course,” I said, still smiling and being polite, “And in my case,”

“It’s narcissism, trust me.” She said.

Okay, narcissism? Is what a person has who thinks her insight must be true for everyone always.