Woke up on the right side of the bed today or something, but this is a zero anxiety or guilt morning. I’m often feeling one or the other usually for complex reasons or for seemingly no reason. The dream I had last night was interesting, though. I was with my parents and we were trying to figure out the tags on my car. The DMV woman suddenly informed me that I’d once parked somewhere without permission, and as a consequence I had to go to prison for ten years. I was shocked, because absolutely nothing in anyone’s demeanor in the dream suggested that that was a reasonable possibility to expect. I had a flurry of familiar negative emotions I’ve had in bishop’s offices and reinforced in close conversations with parents and adult figures, only in a context that was bizarre — the DMV over parking violations. I started to get emotional to think my life was over over something so stupid, and the woman looked sorry for me, like this punishment was steep but was in place for the benefit of the individual mostly. She adjusted by some minor fraction which left me as despondent as before. I looked towards my parents, and they were initially shocked but they were holding hands now and had that happy-sad smile on their faces that whatever I was about to endure, it was for my good and would make me a better person. There was a feeling in my bosom like everyone around me was completely insane. The DMV woman said I was free for a certain amount of days before I had to surrender myself to authorities to begin the sentence, and I had the thought that this system is not very well designed at all. I could have out of emotion assaulted the woman or gone outside, jumped in my car, and drove it down to Mexico or anywhere where they don’t care about that sort of thing. I only had to serve the sentence if I stayed in this place or anywhere near my parents. So I went outside, got in my car, and just left them there with that crazy DMV woman. No ceremony. Not a whole lot of feelings except the absence of the bad ones. Then I woke up to my alarm telling me to go to work. As the dream lingered on the edge of the Memory cliff of early morning, I thought about it and kept it while I resumed the feelings I had the night before about the culture impact of the War of the Worlds novel on the USA. I had beautiful emotional clarity this morning after a moment. No thoughts of anything that make me flinch or gasp with anxiety. No ominous things on the horizon. There’s nothing wrong with my life except for what Mormonism and my codependency fueled by my odd relationship with my folks puts in my head, but I’ve stopped associating with them and I’m cutting neural pathways connecting me to that cPTSD trapped mindset, and it’s working? That’s what the dream seems to represent, or it’s an expression of certain emotions in an illuminating alternate context.

Is it my fault that those feelings are inflamed around my folks? Whenever I achieve a health mindset and hold it for a day which allows me to be emotionally available for the day, the first toxic thought threatening to topple my little achievement is that I’m just a basket case and all my troubles are of my own making and I keep afflicting people who love me for no reason. But I know that when I give into that codependent thought, all the symptoms of codependency manifest again but the guilt of being “private” goes away. God, that really is codependency isn’t it? How does this happen? I don’t know; it’s just good to feel it diminishing. Am I a basket case? I feel like a sane person with a cognitive disorder or two who was raised by psychos. I had severe untreated ADHD and also possibly some undiagnosed ASD, and I had these challenges with the worst parental and religious set up possible, which created a storm of mental illness that raged for decades and should have taken me, and yet I’m still here. I think I’m still here because I have a cold consistent logical presence in my frontal lobes even when the rest of my brain is freaking out emotionally. Is that what sanity is? What do people even mean when they talk about sanity? I have a firm grip on the ability to tell facts and reason on what they mean, but I have been existing in a space where that’s insane to care about facts and truth. I often don’t know how to socially or emotionally orient myself, but I have a north star in the body of facts and thoughts I accumulated trying to prove Mormonism is true and then failing.

Claiming sanity is just a way to say I'm okay an you're not. There is no such thing. And, no one is really okay.

I have always thought that our subconscious sorts things out while we sleep and the dreams are just a few lingering remnants of that. (Luckily my subconscious often takes breaks and goes flying during the night although no one in my dreams is ever impressed that I am hovering ten feet in the air above them.)

"I only had to serve the sentence if I stayed in this place or anywhere near my parents." Seems your subconscious has come to terms with your need to leave a lot in the rearview mirror. Your self has given yourself permission.

The DMV is a surprising choice to represent the Mormon church although they do have as many regulations, laws, and penalties and can really screw up your life if they choose.

Yes. I have just channeled Joseph and with the Dreamcoat although he prefers to consider famines and such usually and said your dream had such obvious meanings there wasn't much need of his services.

what about My Dreams, soothslayer?

I always thought the dreams in Genesis didn’t really need a prophet of Yahweh to interpret them.

Perhaps the dreams were already processed by the prophets before they assumed written form. That would explain why they are so easy to interpret.

The DMV is because my folks signed over my car to me, which I accepted right before I cut them off. It still hasn’t had the tags done, cuz it needs work. I hardly ever use it anyway, but I’ll get around to it if my ADHD lets me remember and also let’s me navigate the frustration of dealing with red tape that is seemingly designed to make me angry for no reason.

Having them there with me represents my perceived dependence on their dumb asses or else it represents how they always seem to be there in my life in areas I really wish they weren’t anymore.

Having the DMV woman inform me that my forgetful ass was gonna get me ten years incarceration over some petty infraction am my parents’ assent to this injustice probably represents a number of things. Any time I have tried to interface with the broader world, my folks have been there to cock it up somehow under the guise of helping me. Maybe they’re actually physically there because they believe O can’t do anything without them or maybe their reputation just precedes me because I have their last name. But they affect my life profoundly in ways I cannot escape, and they would have me feel like a sinner deserving of punishment even when they’re smiling and calmly telling me they love me and they get everyone from that Mormon mini verse to agree with them, so I’m just better outside of all of it. They don’t have any power outside of that miniverse, and my mind doesn’t have to be in it in any sense anymore.

The DMV woman represents among other things bishops I’ve had who have all told me that my dad was right was about everything. They sympathize a little bit, but all they ever do is tell me my dad is right. Sympathetic Mormons sometimes show some pity but they never lift their expectations and ultimately side with my father just because he has patriarchal rights. But ultimately it’s the DMV, not the courts, and there’s only so much they can do to me if I choose not to comply anymore. The church does not have authority except over their private property, and my dad is no expert in medicine. I can just drive away and never look back, even though I should get my tags finished so I actually drove my real car.

There are multiple layers to such a simple dream. I feel them. I knew what it meant. It was an interesting context for my brain to play out all those complex feelings of guilt and anxiety and surreality I’ve had since I was a boy.

I guess one more thing is that the church is this authority other short man syndrome that projects more power than it ever could manifest. It’s like the DMV: we go there because we think we have to, and while we there they tell us what all the fees and rules are that seem important but that we don’t care to know, but things become weird when they start saying weirdly arbitrary things about things we’ve done and listing punishments that all depend on your faith in their ability to administer it. Instead of serving ten years for a parking violation, you can simply walk out and dare them to do anything to you because you and they know they’re a paper tiger. So like a fake DMV, or a rogue DMV? Idk. Mormonism feels like the DMV I guess, lots of meetings and procedures you can’t argue with and everyone hates it but they have to comply with it. The person could be a moron sand you have to go through them to get salvation. It’s a particular feeling.