Irresponsibility

I am somewhere in close proximity to a movie theater or a museum or mall or some other place where lots of young people are milling around, being entertained. It actually sort of looks and feels like we're in Saltillo, or a version of it, near the old school. I'm rummaging through my purse, when I pull out a class ring. It looks like a guy's ring — it's hefty and gold with black inking, and a pretty purple stone, cut into an oval shape with notched angles (is there a technical term in the gem-cutting world for this?) to catch the light.

Except, the gem that had once probably shone smooth and polished, was chipped, dented, and muted from having been knocking around in the bottom of my purse for who knows how long.

It dawned on me immediately, along with a sick sense of oh shit I'm in trouble, that this was (co-worker/friend) Ashley's ring. She had let me borrow it for some reason, and I had forgotten that it was in my purse, being assaulted by a roundbrush, a handful of tampons, crumbs, my wallet, receipts, lip gloss, nasal spray and everything else I haul around with me for fear I might be stranded and need to subsist on things from the Walgreens beauty aisle.

That plot point sort of evaporated then. I don't know where it went, and I don't know where the dream took me after that. But I'd like to find out how to rid my dreams of that constant anxious feeling that I've done something wrong, that I'll get in trouble, that the world is ending in small increments brought on by my irresponsibility.