Nightmare

Date: 1/15/2022

TW: sexual assault, blood, all that I guess. Haven’t had this nightmare since I was a kid. It starts with another dream, like usual. This time it’s about colorful people— everyone seems to be centered around one color of the rainbow. There’s a group of ‘purple people’ who have stained purple skin, purple freckles, purple clothes and shoes, purple hair, or something else to make them very clearly ‘themed’ purple. This was the same for each color of the rainbow. There was a long road and every different area / building on the right housed different groups of each color. On the left, different color groups mixed. As if the right side were their homes, and they came to mingle normally in the field and buildings to the left. The color didn’t have anything to do with skin color, religion, or anything else apparent. Like it wasn’t like that y’know? It was just, everyone was different but no-one was mean about it, no-one made fun of other colors, it seemed like genuine peace and friendliness all around, just people being people and chatting whatnot. The main problem was that I was unsure of which color group I fit in. The people were nice wherever I went, seemed genuine and offered to let me stay with them in all their big buildings— which were like assemblies with all the same color lining the seats, talking about whatever or laughing or whatever— but I wasn’t fitting into any of them. I went to oranges first, tried to hang with them for a while, but I wasn’t orange and eventually left. Red next, same result. I ate food given to me by a red dude, he was cool with bright red hair, piercings, red freckles and a red outfit— but I left eventually, was planning on exploring everything on my own. A main point I noticed in the dream was that everyone seemed to be a color with at least one other person. They were paired up, sometimes in bigger groups. Almost as if they had given each other their color. I felt as if maybe I had to meet the ‘right person’ for us to find our colors together, somehow? That’s when HE came. His signature hat was red, but otherwise he the most ‘normal colored’ or ‘real world’ person I’d seen in the dream, with differently colored clothes, plain pale skin, and brown hair. He was the same guy from all of my nightmares when I was little. I haven’t ‘seen’ him in a while. I didn’t realize it was a dream, but I knew I’d seen him before. I knew what he meant. I saw him as I was walking down the road. I saw his hat first, out of the corner of my eye, then his white stubbled jaw. I couldn’t make myself turn to meet his eyes. I didn’t want him to know that I KNEW he was following me. He was tall, massively so, even from far away I could tell he was at least four feet taller than me. Like, UNNATURALLY tall. Like always. And he was coming for me. Like always. I sped into a group of people on the left side of the road. Again, I didn’t want him to know that I knew he was there, so I tried to speed walk as inconspicuously as possible. I ended up in a big crowd of different people, who were all chill. I tried walking back, towards the general orange and red areas, looking at the right side of the road from my position on the left. I kept watch for that red hat. It continued down the opposite direction. A group of nice fellows noticed when I hurried into their midst. I ran into the nice red dude from earlier, the one who offered me food. I saw his partner, a girl with a shaved head, a red beanie, red clothes and doc martins, and red eyes. The two were in a group of others, including a decent number of pinks, oranges, and a few blues and turquoises. They were all paired up with one other person except the oranges and pinks, who were a part of what seemed to be a bigger group; all of them were nice, and the red couple asked what was up. I told them I was running from a man in a red hat. I told them he wanted to rape me. I knew this, for a fact. It was true, just like it always is when he appears in my dreams. They seemed genuinely concerned but stayed calm, which helped a lot. They all agreed to hide me if I came to their house, and went back to their houses, telling their houses not to make a big deal— otherwise the man would know that I knew that he was after me— but to protect / hide me if I came in, and lie to a tall man in a red hat if they saw him. I noticed his hat over the crowd, getting closer. I ran. And I ran. I was scared, for real scared for myself, for the first time in what seems like forever. First time since I was a kid and had these nightmares basically. Ever since becoming suicidal, there’s not much that scares me. But rape terrifies me. Partly because of the Bad Man in these dreams, and how he’s haunted me my whole life, perhaps. For whatever reason I was scared and I wasn’t used to it. There was only one time when I was little where he caught me in one of these nightmares; in all the others I woke myself up by yelling or my heart racing too much, right before he caught me. The time he did catch me when I was little, he raped me. It was painstakingly long. It wasn’t a short thing, like if he had stabbed me, quick and over with. It was a process: him catching me, reassuring me that ‘it’s all okay,’ that I was ‘such a pretty young lady,’ not to tell my parents; him pinning me down, acting like my desperate fighting was NOTHING to him; blood and pain. And horrible reactions from my body, and hating it. And hating it. Hating that my body reacted the way it did, that he promised me it meant good things, that when he finished he simply got up and left me there, buckling his belt. I HATED everything about it, I hated it, it made me feel weak and worthless and horrible and hating myself and hating him with nothing I could do, nothing I could ever do besides cry and that made me feel even more worthless, like I wanted to curl into a ball and die except I didn’t even have the energy for that, so I laid there crying and hating myself and woke up confused because when I first had these dreams I didn’t know what sex or rape was at all. I was scared for that to happen again. In the dream my mind desperately raced with only one thought: don’t let him catch me. So I ran. I went to red first, and he came in. I hid under a row of seats and the others were perfectly inconspicuous. They lied and hid me in just the right amount of crowding to look normal. But eventually he asked if he could search and for some reason he had the authority to, so they distracted him while I ran to orange. Something similar happened where I hid, they did their best but in the end I had to escape again. I ended up in the large crowd. Eventually I decided something. I went up on a pedestal in front of the big crowd of colors on the left side of the road— the reds from earlier as well as the oranges came to see me and other people, recognizing that they were crowding and waiting for me to speak, followed suit. Soon I had a crowd to speak to. I told them that the tall man in the red hat was going to hurt me. That he HAD hurt me. I told them and desperately hoped they not only believed me but, as they knew now, could do something, ANYTHING. Before I could even see the crowd’s reaction I saw his hat. Something about the fact that he was still coming— that, despite getting up and other people’s help and hell, telling everyone, because that was exhausting and hard!— i was still being chased and he was still going to hurt me, it scared me so bad I woke up. I laid there for a second before I couldn’t handle it any longer. I don’t know why this nightmare came back after so long. I’d almost forgotten about it. It made me feel HELPLESS. Weak. Horrible about myself. Angry. Worthless. I got up and vented on this app called Sup, where these two lovely strangers talked with me and helped distract me. One of them suggested a hot milk— I went downstairs and got a hot tea. (Then I cut myself. I couldn’t help it, the strangers had to go and I was left with the disappointingly cold dregs of once hot tea and no distraction and bad, bad thoughts, and I ended up cutting a lot. I felt better after that though!) It’s exhausting to think about but I need to record this so I remember when first I had this nightmare again if it happens another time. It’s the first time in a long, long time.