It has been awhile since I had such a vivid dream, but it left me fairly upset for no reason. Lots of pictures in this post, click on them for regular size gallery images.

I was going to a new school, I couldn’t really tell if it was high school or college, but it was definitely me old enough to think like an adult. The details now are slipping past me except that I wasn’t allowed to eat lunch with everyone, there was some sort of mixup in me being able to use the building my classes were in as a lunchroom even though part of it was and people were eating there.

I also would wander around and find some of the rooms had equipment I couldn’t reach, of for whatever reason I didn’t bring the equipment I was supposed to at home. It was a constant attempt at finding access to a computer I could use and even times when I kept losing my clothes so I couldn’t sit in the same room as people.

I met a few people I sort of liked, and one person that I believe was my husband GardenRat and we were pretty much thick as thieves. The math class was hard, I never had the right book and was always tired. I did get through though and by the end of the quarter or semester (whatever my dream was keeping score of end of school length) I was told that I wouldn’t be allowed in for classes the next cycle, and the doors would be locked.

That bothered me, but only a little. I asked if I could at least come use the lunchroom, and the sad teacher shook her head and said no, I wouldn’t ever be able to come back into this class area and I would have to go down much further on the campus (at this point it felt like a campus like Western Washington University) and find a new set of classes. She said the doors would be locked and I couldn’t ever come back in.

I was incredibly sad and spent the last day in classes trying to figure out how I could sneak past the locks, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to. The anxiety made me feel I had done this before too many times.

I woke up fairly upset for no reason I understood. I haven’t had to go to any classes for 15 years, at least since I graduated college finally at the age of 37 in 2007, and while I talk about going back to get a master’s, the odds are it won’t happen until I retire and I can do it to take some extra side classes (or maybe do that even before retirement).

Then I realized this is probably a directly related dream to my growing up and going to five different high schools.

I grew up super poor, the alcoholism had caught up with my parents, and the older couple that had hired my parents as assistant managers and worked with my dad’s PTSD/mental health issues for years had been able to work it out that my dad could still work even with his mental health issues. It was the only stable time in my life until I got married at the age of 21.

It was one of the two jobs my dad had after Vietnam that worked with his mental health, resulting in what both employers called their best employee, but that is because he was super loyal and would work far harder than anyone else, when he could (and he was almost always far better than the next worker). By the time I was in 8th grade (last year in middle school) that both spouses that worked with him as his bosses,

had passed away. The new manager was “corporate” (even though this was a HUD/Section 8 set of apartments) resulting in my dad not being able to stay at the job. After that is when the alcohol kicked fully with no support network and within months we were being evicted.

So by then we had already moved to two new places within 6 months by the time I had entered high school as a freshman at Everett High School. A poor high school, but had some really cool classes and I started taking drafting class and a class about World War I and II and I realized I liked taking history classes and learning how to draft.

I had lost contact with all my friends I had up until 8th grade because of the evictions (we were all “projects” kids so when I was no longer in the projects, I didn’t see them), but being back at Everett High School I had started to reintegrate with them, of course also with all the hormonal changes as well the interrelations were different so it was a slow but steady process. At the time my best friend then was a girl who I had always had a crush on and when I saw her again she had definitely stepped into womanhood. I realize now that it was a mix of her being my best friend, of me wanting her to be interested in me, and me wanting to be her (or at least me wanting to be a girl)… strange how that repeated itself but just much stronger by the end of my childhood story with Garden Rat…

Then they inherited money from my original namesake grandfather passing away and invested it in the drug trade making us move after the first semester (not even full fall semester) of high school. Resulting in us having some money, but having to move from Everett to a trailer in Lake Stevens.

Then the whole “incident” went down, and an ex-friend of my dad’s thought it would be better to put a contract on our family then try and repay my dad, so put an actual contract out on my parents. This resulted in us having to quickly sell off what stuff we did have (my parents invested most of the inheritance in the drug business, but had bought a mobile home and a small plot of land) and we ended up living in a car for about a year with small bits in emergency housing when my parents were sober enough to deal with the requirements of that housing.

During these months I never went to school, we were living out of rest stops on the freeway and state parks. I guess that means I got to see a lot of stuff kids my age couldn’t, or at least not in the manner I was. With this whole situation happening my parents went into full alcoholism mode, and from halfway through my 14th year in 1986 until I graduated in 1989, we never lived at the same place for longer than 6 months, and usually it was 3-4 months was higher end of our stay.

By spring of 1986 we ended up in Lake Tahoe Nevada, I registered for my third school at the end of Spring Semester and ended up going a few days until school wrapped up for summer break. I was excited to be going to school there in the fall. In addition we got to visit places like Reno, Carson City and the Bucket of Blood and even Heavenly Valley and the Donner’s Pass. It was a beautiful area and my parents started cutting back on the drinking.

Well… that never fully happened and by the time fall came around we had already moved out from the hotel we were living in (did I forget to mention were were living at a state park in Lake Tahoe when I wrapped up spring semester, but had moved into the Tahoe Mountain Lodge (maybe it was just Tahoe Lodge…) and were living in the hotel as we entered summer. Like I said though, by the end of summer we were already homeless again and back in Washington State, this time we ended up in Birch Bay.

We finally found a mobile home to rent in Birch Bay and within a couple of weeks Fall semester had started and I was going to Blaine High School (Birch Bay is too small to have a high school and their population is geared for summer tourists so it was dead there in winter).

I went to Blaine High School (my 4th high school) and attended it for Fall Semester and then into Spring Semester. I had finally made friends again with some of the local Lummi tribal kids we lived next too. It is also the first time I noticed a girl interested in me back, Morgan and she was from Montana (and had stark white hair). She would lay her head on my lap daily in our shared bus seat for the longest bus ride ever from Birch bay to Blaine. I had a crush but of course I figured she was just wanting to be friends… this is a repeat that happens a lot in my life. I evidently cannot read the room with someone that may have a romantic or at least physical interest in me.

Unfortunately by Spring of 1987 we were homeless again and moved 30 miles south to Bellingham and once again I had to register for Bellingham High School as my 5th high school I had attended in the last 2.5 years.

Bellingham High School was probably the most barebones school, steam heating cracks in walls, incredibly limited choice of classes. By this time however I had been to so many high schools that I didn’t do much but hang out with the stoners and punks between the various evictions my family went through in Bellingham. I did go to school every day though, because they offered free lunch and it is the only time I knew I would be fed, I especially love those industrial cinnamon rolls for breakfast.

By the time I was in Bellingham High School I was. hitting 16 years old and I was working full time around high school and giving my paychecks directly to my parents. I wouldn’t learn until I moved out with my hubby a couple years later that if I kept the paychecks but then paid the bills myself my parents wouldn’t get evicted. Weirdly enough I noticed this was the time I had the least pictures of myself, like 4 photos plus Camp Horizon in the 1.5 years I went to Bellingham High.

Even as I make Bellingham High (my 5th high school) sound like the worst school, it is at this time I met my best friend Garden Rat, who became my husband (although he had already left Bellingham and went to Sehome High School, and eventually dropped out of there) so I never got to actually take classes with him until we went to college decades later.

That was a long winded way of saying I am fairly sure the dream was frustrations (or maybe just processing) of the fact I didn’t have a normal(ish) childhood. I am sure part of this is sparked by therapy, and part of it is we have been watching a lot of anime that takes place with characters in school that knew each other for long periods.

In contrast I was never allowed to have a group of friends to go to school with and grow up with regularly from end of middle school on. I wasn’t allowed to take the same teachers or even see the same classrooms more than once or twice and never had most of those “high school” experiences everyone talks about.

My experiences in high school were not a continuum, but discrete vignettes that never repeated themselves. It results in a huge amount of stories I can tell, and I think I am reaching that place in my mental health that I probably will share them, but it isn’t a continuous life experience with the same group of friends, teachers and locations, but a sporadic show about survival in my home life punctuated by scenes in new classrooms and new people that never come back to the show…

For some reason last night my brain had to process a little of it, but it always leaves me a little disorientated the next morning, and a little sad.