Wow, I think I could really use some interpretive help on the following. I'm sick of having dreams like this. It's not fair to me or to my family, some of whom have apologized and with whom I maintain a tenuous peace. I've been told by a doctor that I suffer from PTSD because of experiences like the following.

It's the early 80s and I'm in my late teens/early 20s. I have an assignment I'm working on for university and I need more paper for the typewriter. I go all around the house, hoping to find some paper that Dad has left beside a typewriter somewhere or stowed away in one of his heavy wooden work desks. I can find none, so I sigh because I'm going to have to go upstairs and ask for some from my parents and I know things are tense up there. I go and ask for some paper. My mother asks me to apologize first for my tone of voice earlier. I now remember that we'd been sitting on camping chairs in the forest and she'd started to slap me around, but then we'd come into the present (me 47 years old and in good physical condition; her in her mid 70s and weakened) and I'd fought back, bringing her to the ground. She'd felt humiliated and hadn't spoken to me since. She and Dad were afraid I'd gone bad and would end up a street kid. So I ask for some paper, I'm asked to apologize, and Dad and my sisters just mouth to me, "Just do it." So I frame an apology under a tight smile. I'm given some paper. I go out the front door to the street where I grew up, and I let out a scream. It's heard inside, and then my mom herds my two sisters, both under 15, out the door and into the station wagon. They're about to leave the family and leave me with Dad and she and Dad are even talking about how to divide up the dogs. I look at the dogs and know they're crying inside because they know they're about to be separated forever and it's my fault. I can't believe my sister Bren is in the car and not saying anything. I yell at her that I thought she was my best friend and that she's a traitor - and it seems someone I can't identify is beside me feeding the word "traitor" to me, coaching me along. Then I yell at my sister Joanne, who is now a tall blonde woman with a two-year-old son. I see a Sunday School schedule where my sisters and I attend a shul while my nephew attends a Sunday School class on Jesus. (We're not Jewish in real life - at least not in practice, only in partial background.)

I wake up with people vaguely whirling about me, blaming me for breaking up my family. I'm still drugged up with Clonazepam and therefore half in dreamland, so I know I have to go back to sleep and kill myself in the dream to show everybody I'm a valid person. I know it's safe to kill myself in the dream, because I'll just wake up here. So I go back into the dream and then I'm watching news accounts of myself taking Clonazepam two at a time and delaying each dosage so I don't throw up, so that the overdose'll take and I'll get to leave. But instead I see myself as a blonde teen prostitute with tatoos all over her body. The tatoos are in the form of black vines crawling over every inch of my skin. There's a documentary narration voice stating I woke up here, my name was Margaret as a kid but it's now Megit, and I'm serving fries - which men are only too happy to take from me. The way I'm serving fries is, well, pornographic, and one by one. Apparently Margaret had woken up drugged up and surrounded by a prostitution ring. The documentary goes on to say that the rest of the family - who are now African-American brothers - has reunited and the sons have their own sons, who uncomfortably remind them of themselves.

Very important note here: I'm not suicidal in real life, not in the least. I used to be. But I'm too old and too well medicated for that crap now. I had forgotten to take my antidepressant yesterday morning, but had realized and taken it at night.

Another note: Yes, my mom used to slap me around a bit. She'd get in strange moods where you could almost see a thundercloud over her head. I remember once I saw her like that and stiffened up as I had to walk by her, and then she whaled on me with four or five slaps and told me it was because I was walking with my "nose in the air" looking like I had a "stick up [my] ass". I was scared of her and my dad, who got his slaps and kicks in as well when he went through his depression, to the point that at the age of 14 I almost left home. This is just another PTSD-type nightmare. I read a story about a street kid yesterday, so that was probably what triggered the element of fear of what could have happened to me.