Back to School 'Mares

Every year, before I go back to school, I begin to have nightmares. This year they have begun uncharacteristically early.

Last night, I dreamt that I was running late for school, and had to turn in an essay. No matter what I did, I couldn't print off the essay to take with me. Outside, it was raining like it does in the movies, heavy and unceasingly. Begrudgingly, my sister said that she would drive me to school so that I wouldn't be late. But as she went outside to start the car, I kept realizing that I was forgetting more and more things. The biggest problem was the cabbage. For some reason, I had to take a whole bunch of chopped cabbage with me to school. It was everywhere: in drawers, on counters, on the floor, and I just couldn't carry it all. The drawers in my bathroom were filled with chopped red and green cabbage.

I looked up in my trusty dream dictionary, and it said that cabbage can be a symbol that you have been fighting a lot with your family lately. That is an understatement! Possibly the biggest understatement of the year... Sometimes I make rules for myself, like I can't respond directly to an argumentative statement from a member of my family. I have to take a minute or two, put some thought in and then respond. This usually works, but at the expense of my sanity. I usually trash the rule after an hour or a few minutes.

I don't really know what to do. Being around my family is like pure torture. I always had this image in my head of reaching my twenties and all of a sudden having a great relationship with my parents, being able to spend time together without being at one another's throats all day. But alas, we are more like wolverines than people. To be objective about things, however, is quite interesting. If I take the stance that I am a foreign psychologist doing a case study on a dysfunctional family, then the situation is fascinating, really. Fascinating....