No Beef Eater

I have not eaten beef for 24 years. I used to love beef and I ate it at least once a week prior to an incident that prompted the most horrific dream. In 1998 I owned an art gallery in a neighborhood in Chicago called Bucktown. When I opened the gallery I was living only blocks away from it, but a few years later, I moved to the suburbs, which meant that I had about an hour long commute in traffic to get home. This particular day the traffic heading north was stop and go. I ended up next to a truck full of cows, which I assumed was heading to Wisconsin for slaughter. I kept making eye contact with the cows and couldn’t help but feel sorry for them. I think I went home and ate steak for dinner, however. This prompted me to have a dream that night that haunts me to this day. I dreamt that I worked in a slaughter house and it was my job to slit open cows that were hanging on a conveyor and pull out their guts. The dream was very graphic and I think I might have gagged in my sleep. At the time, I was pregnant with my middle daughter and my oldest daughter was 2 years old. The dream ended with me walking in the front door after work in my “work” jacket, which looked just like the ones you see a Butcher wear, which I never understood because they are usually all white. It was covered in blood and guts. My daughter came running in to greet me and cried “I wish you were a normal mommy with a normal job so that I can hug you when you get home from work.” With that I woke up and said, “it’s going to be a long time before I can eat beef again.” And so far, I never have (at least to my knowledge).