Self, Unbound

There's something wonderfully secretive and expository about this photo all at once (if you know where I found it, please tell me so I can credit the source--I can't remember). It almost seems as if the two women are one person. The girl in the background, doing the unlacing, is peering over the other's shoulder, as if peeking, as if saying, "Do you see this? Here I am. Look what I am doing." The corseted girl in the foreground is her secret self, the one she is exposing.

I dreamed last night that I was trying to dress for work and none of my skirts were long enough to cover my bruised bottom. Apparently, my dream self owned no pants. I also could not find any tights or leggings--my only option was to wear a skirt that barely hit the sweet spot where cheek meets thigh and socks that only went up to my knees.

In the dream I was frantic. "Everyone will know," I kept saying to myself. My husband appeared in the dream and said, "Everyone can see you." I know. I know.

There were times before we started the Naughty Abby project when I wanted to delete my entire blog, to go back into hiding. Sometimes it's so much easier to wear a mask (a subject I have already written about and will post later today, once a sample clip of the new paddling movie can be posted with it). I am so exposed. But I chose this, didn't I? It was my self in the background, telling the self at the core of me, "Like it or not, you're coming unbound."

Then again, in the dream, after my husband told me that everyone could see me, he told me he wanted me to cook eggplant for dinner. He would never say that. Never. So perhaps the desire to be naked in both soul and flesh before God and everybody is the real me, and the one who wants to hide is only a dream, a memory of me.