No Particular Order; Hopes For Home

A while back, I was reading a book. It was a dry and winding academic text, but it had a brief story in it : one chapter was a philosopher’s account of a psychiatrist’s interpretation of a dream relayed (second hand, of course) to Sigmund Frued. This dream had apparently occurred many years before the psychoanalysy heard it.

I do not believe the dream happened, but the metaphor it presents is interesting none the less.

The story begins when the son of a man dies due to some sort of treatable disease; had the boy’s father sought treatment sooner, the child would have lived. The father is overwhelmed by grief, and refuses to leave the side of his son’s coffin for some time. One night, as he is sleeping next to his departed child, the man has a dream that his son has stepped out of his coffin: the boy looks at his father, and asks “How could you let me die?”. As the father attempts to answer this, his son bursts into flames.

The father is so startled by this that he wakes. He immediately sees that a candle has fallen and lit the bunting on his son’s coffin ablaze. He hurriedly puts it out.

The philosopher says that the Psychiatrist viewed this dream as a fantasy which became too real-- when the father was confronted with the reality of his son’s death, he awoke to flee that. He left his dream to enter reality to avoid the reality of his situation.

I’m graduating college in six days. It’s made me think of this dream, my reality, and my dreams when I came to college.

Four years ago, I saw the city I currently live in as a glamorous, opportunity filled world where the best and the brightest migrate in order to change the world for the better. I saw my move to this city as a chance to change the world for the better, meet likeminded people, and also as a chance to reinvent myself. Most importantly, I saw it as a way out of the tourism-based slice of New Jersey I grew up in.

Some of this was true; it’s not worth explaining what is and isn’t. What matters now is that I’m returning home. I’m leaving the dream for reality, and like the father next to the burning bunting, I’m doing so to slip away from reality by diving into it.

Later in the book I was reading, the Philosopher’s thoughts drifted back to fantasy. He said that it only works in the imaginary, as once it becomes real, it becomes like reality itself: terrible and horrifying.

A while back, I knew four men living in one apartment. When they would go to the bars seeking companionship, they would first clean their living space; when you visited, you could tell what had happened the night before by looking at the room. If it was clean, they went out. In the center of their living room was a futon: if it was folded, nothing happened. If it was flat, someone’s roommate was displaced and had to sleep in the common area, meaning that a quest was successful.

I’m pulling away from the dream I had in high school and I feel like the folded futon in the clean room. Clearly, I went out, but I’m coming back the same way I left: alone.

This, I suppose, is my reality. I was hoping to change my world; the cruel fact of the matter was that I needed to change myself. I wanted to meet people like me, but I didn’t know me. The most repulsive person I met in Washington D.C. had the jobs I wanted, had a similar experience in high school, and reads the same books I do. He stuck to the plan he hatched senior year of high school; I didn’t. Neither of us is happy, but for different reasons. Him, because of his success. Me, because of my inability to find a success I wanted. I didn’t know myself.

D.C., as a fantasy of mine, worked better as a dream. Once I came here, it became a reality, with all the horror a reality entails. The horror was that I wasn’t moving to DC to flee from the Shore where I grew up. I was trying to move away from myself, my habits, and my transgressions. These stick with you; moving works better as a fantasy.

The last bit of soul searching I wrote was banged out while I was sleeping on a stranger’s a couch in a town with a law school that I didn’t get into. I told myself that I knew I wouldn’t be admitted. I wrote about it the night before I toured. I listed off every negative thing about the town and the school to stop myself from becoming invested in it. It didn’t work. Then I bombed my informal interview, albiet unintentionally. After that I thought about my philosophy and got drunk on a Greyhound bus.

The letter placing me on the wait list at that school eventually came. It felt a bit weird. I wanted to be at UVA, but now my hope is that the school doesn’t admit me this summer: I think I need time to go home, work on my head, and recover from four years of learning the reality of a fantasy.

All I can hope is that I can return to Monmouth, and when I do, I’m not leaving a dream to avoid reality; I hope that I use my foray back into reality for what it’s worth, instead of just eventually slipping back into dreaming. I hope that I better myself, and do what I should have done during these past four years: work towards myself, not a degree.