The Mad Hatter's Tea Party

I had a dream last night. I was at work and it was my last day. I was either being retired or being fired. This is a recurring theme. At any rate I had an appointment with a psychotherapist whom I imagined was going to help me move into a new phase or career.

My partner, John, drove me to this large squid shaped building with parking lots surrounding it. The multistory structure had windows above us that had signs indicating "psychotherapy." The place seemed to be in Chico, California. I had an appointment with my opthamologist too for an exam and a fresh supply of disposable contacts. I somehow missed that appointment as my focus was on meeting with my new psychotherapist.

We parked temporarily in a space just outside a automobile service center that was in the lower level the shopping center. There were people moving about in seemingly random patterns. My job was to get into the building and up to the therapist's office. John told me to ask someone where the office was. I was reluctant, it seems, but I found a front entrance with marble walls and what seemed to be a locater board of some sort. As I bounced around through the massive throng I was aware of how comfortable I had become over the years with large anonymous crowds.

I could not find the elevator. A person I asked a gave me some abstruse instructions in which he continued to confuse "left" and "right." I decided to use my own intuitive skills to locate the elevator to the floors above. I finally found stairs. The floor upon which I found myself contained many merchants and different bright colored signs. But there was no sign of the therapist. I had an idea what he looked like as I had spotted him through a window from the place where we parked the car. There was a sign on large plate glass windows that said something like "Therapist" or something similar.

Someone finally pointed me to some strange stripped curtains behind which I suppose the confidentiality of clients was supposed to be preserved. I saw the windows with pink plastic like shower curtains haphazardly hung in them. There was a door with a very colorful fabric draped down it. I entered and immediately found myself interrupting the therapist and a male client. They were not surprised. I backed off to a waiting room that appeared with chairs scatted in no discernible pattern.

When I finally had my turn with the therapist, he could not find a space for us to confer. He kept bobbing about into a cafeteria like environment where he alighted and I somehow knew that I was to join him. I was shaking and he put his hand on my knee. I suspect that was to gauge my emotional condition. I propped my leg against a table top to steady the shaking and to give the impression that I was calm. I kept waiting for him to begin some form of session with me. But he was obviously intimidated by me. At one point I thought he was going to begin by discussing the fee with me as he had done with the client that I had stumbled in on just a little bit before. The $190 was rather steep but I decided that I would pay it and keep coming back to do all of my business in Chico.
The crowd of people morphed into college students from CSU Chico.

My therapist could not look me in the eye. I began feeling quite equal if not superior to him in term of presence. He got up at one point and went to another cafeteria bench. I assumed that I should follow. At this point I was taking over. He would not look at me. Suddenly he went to the floor on his back and an acquaintance of his seemed to deliver some form of physical therapy - maybe artificial respiration. I wanted to talk about myself and the things I wanted to do. Somehow I thought the therapist could help me become a psychology intern.

Finally I told him I would come back. He seemed to acknowledge that this was fine. I'm not certain he ever wanted to see me again. He was so shy around me. He told me I was not what he had expected. Rather, he thought I was a nineteen-year-old Greek woman when I had made the appointment with him.

We parted and my task was to get out of the huge mall to the parking lot. All of a sudden John was there with me and we were having a snack in the center some where. I started watching a little person using a wheel chair He turned on some laud music player device. It was very disturbing. John reached up and shut it off. The little person was offended and his father or guardian was irate. I was embarrassed. The little person looked at me because he intuited that I had understanding and compassion. Actually it was probably the manifestation of my "savior complex" that gets me into scrapes in non-dream life. We tried to buy the two of the offended ones some food. But they kept retreating from our advances toward them. Finally they escaped.

Back at the food tables, it was 2:00 in the afternoon. Things seemed to be closing. Suddenly every one had on hospital bands. The college students morphed into middle-aged adults. It occurred to me that this was similar to the situation I was familiar with in the locked door wards where I once worked as a graduate student. It downed on me when I awakened and reviewed this dream sequence that I feel like I am actually living in a psycho ward. This is the culture in which I find myself, where mental health is the exception rather than the rule. Fortunately I have keys and can therefore depart at any time I wish for a sanity break. This is the world in which I live. I thought of the weird political theater that is taking place among the politicians who are popping up like hand puppets from below the stage opening in preparation for the 2012 presidential fiasco. Look for the hospital bands and opt out of this farce. It is time to find a new game; one in which the elections actually make a difference. That would be democracy.