The Treatment Dream

Perhaps its because Thanksgiving is looming, a dark hooded figure for bulimics that starts a holiday season of food faux pas and consumption gumption. But I had that treatment dream again. The one where a medical-like figure tells me my behaviors are irreconcilable and I silently contest, wondering what the behaviors are that compel one to call me a "danger to myself" as they handcuff me into a facility that, in the dream, I've been to before. In real life there were never any handcuffs, of course. But there was a bag check. And confiscation of nail clippers and pepto.

And so, in the dream, I sit around in groups, pleading that I don't belong there, that I've been sick before but this time, this time for real, it was just one mistake. One accidental purge. Nothing serious. Nothing compulsive.

And they tell me that we all say that.

That we are all alike.

The other faces around me in the dream are shadowy, a mixture of childhood friends and college roommates and my middle school crush.

And then they tell me my tests are back. My electrolytes are fucked again. I'm on i.v. again.

And I wonder, how did this happen?

The thing about the dream is that the hospital changes every time. Once it was the actual hospital. Another time is was my childhood church. This last time, it was the bedroom in the parsonage that I grew up in, the one my sisters and I shared, seventies wallpaper garishly beckoning an era before our arrival. And my roommate: my sister.

I could spend a lot of time wondering what kinds of tales my subconscious is spinning together but I think the answer is boringly obvious.

Tomorrow morning, I have an early flight home. My partner and I are meeting in my hometown airport. My sister's fouton is waiting for our arrival. This is our first Thanksgiving that we've been invited, as a couple, as part of the family. Our student debt is buying our flights. We're both guarding against expecting too much but there's a part of me that's hopeful. That my grandmother and aunt will welcome Cat around the table, asking about our lives together and our plans for children, as they do with my sisters, our conversation droning out my father as he excitedly discusses Newt's recent climb in the poles.

But the thing about going home is to just accept what's available. To not look for too much. To remember that my sister, after dinner, will have a bottle of wine waiting for us where we will decompress and she will worry again about how my parents are pushing her into a wedding she doesn't care about. A wedding she can't afford. She, oblivious to the dinner where Cat and I sat awkwardly with our mashed potatoes as my grandmother asks me, again, why I don't have time for a boyfriend.

And we will sip from our glasses, wondering when we can be alone, the Thanksgiving turkey heavy in our stomachs.

And I wonder, why was I put here? Whose in charge? How can I get out? What are my test results?

And I remember, this time, it was my choice.