Back to my nightmare

I posted this link to Facebook a couple days ago.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html

I made an instant connection with the tale of depression and the attempt and failure to just force it away.  But I saw another connection while recalling a dream from this weekend.

Awhile back, I told you that I had wanted to share my recurring nightmare, but I got side-tracked into complaining about the removal of several comic-strip archives from the web.  Well, I had the dream again this weekend, but did not find the time to look for the paper copy of the Sylvia cartoon I wanted to share.  Here is my totally unsatisfying recreation of the strip, with apologies to Nicole Hollander.

I must have a dream at least once per month that I need to change clothes or use the toilet, and I cannot find privacy.  The location, cast and scenario change, but the theme is unmistakably the same, I cannot get any privacy.  I was thinking of this the last time, after my husband's parents took us on a trip to a resort in the Catskills this summer.  This was supposed to be a relaxing vacation, but it was so tense that of course I had my nightmare: we are at the resort, and I am trying to change out of a bathing suit, but the scene turns into a train station, and I am in a public bathroom, and the little girls from my son's class are running around, and I let them use the bathroom, but then I need the toilet, and there are no doors on the stalls, and now there is everyone in the world coming into this bathroom...yeah, the nightmare full force.
So, I don't remember having this nightmare in the couple months since I moved, until this past weekend, when I was staying with a family from the old neighborhood (I had the whole basement to myself, own bathroom and everything, but that is not the only criteria, obviously).  But it had a very interesting twist at the end. I am back in elementary school, I need to use the bathroom, but they are all filthy. I keep looking for a serviceable toilet, and I'm getting desperate.  Finally, I find a somewhat decent stall, but I then realize that all the kids from my class are tromping in and out of the bathroom, and they are adult sized, whereas the walls of the stalls are very low.  Then the stall is somehow out in the play field, and everyone is coming right up to the stall to have a joke at my expense.  And I think to myself, "Too bad for them.  I'm not going to let them keep this up!" So I stand over the wall and yell, "Stay there if you are going to, but I am going to pee!"  And when they realize the joke is over, they mostly just turn away and let me be.
Yeah, that's right baby.  I've become a bad-ass!