For the first time in years I’ve been getting the right amount of sleep at the right time, no more awake until 4am. I’ve been clearly reaching REM too, which is nice.
This is because I’m spending a couple of weeks with my boyfriend (long distance relationship).
I feel so much better now, but I have been having nightmares almost every night and I usually never dream because of my awful routine.
I would like to share last night’s, because I think it stems from trauma with doctors.
Trigger warning since I’ll be discussing abuse, crossing of boundaries, physical violence, dismissal of trauma. I used Claude to generate a good English text:
I was in a hospital with my best friend. We didn’t seem to be workers or visitors, and we didn’t have any visible injuries, so the most plausible explanation was that we were patients.
At some point, we were showering in separate but adjacent private stalls. I forgot to bring my robe with me, so after finishing, I left the shower and quickly hid in the first room I could find so no one would see me naked.
I ended up in a room that had hospital beds with people sleeping, connected to tubes. One woman was completely naked and had a large catheter. The other half of the room looked like a changing or laundry area, with towels and clothes hanging on racks.
While I was calling out to my friend to bring me my robe, I grabbed the smallest towels I could find—small, square ones—and tried to cover my breasts and vulva, even though they were clearly too small to properly cover me.
A female nurse came in and noticed that I was distressed. She offered to help me. While she was there, a male doctor passed by the window and started talking to her, and then to me.
The nurse explained that I needed a moment of privacy to get dressed, and she left to get me something to wear. The doctor said he would leave so that I could feel more comfortable. However, as soon as the nurse left, he entered the room anyway.
He started casually talking to me about unnecessary things, even though we had just met and I was clearly trying to hide myself. I moved a rack of towels in front of me to block his view. While talking, he casually took a towel from the rack right in front of me, leaving me with even less to cover myself—only the small towels I was already holding.
At some point, my best friend came into the room, but instead of bringing my robe, she had brought lunch for a cleaner who worked there. I hurried her and told her to go get my robe. At that point, I found the courage to shout angrily at the doctor, saying something like, “Don’t you see I’m naked? Why are you talking to me and trying to expose me?” After that, he left.
I managed to get a pair of scrubs, put them on, and left the room. I met my best friend again and told her what had happened. I don’t remember the exact conversation, but it felt like she had forgotten about my trauma with doctors and was making fun of me, as if I was overreacting or being silly. I had been hyper-aware and on edge from the moment we entered the hospital, so this hurt me and made me angry.
Then I found myself alone in an underground part of the hospital that looked like a subway system, similar to the London Underground. I was in a train carriage by myself. At one stop, a young male doctor got on.
I don’t remember every detail clearly, but he started behaving in a problematic way. He had a syringe and tried to use it on my right shoulder, invading my space and trying to touch me without my consent. I told him to stay away and leave me alone, but he reacted badly, as if I had offended him or challenged his authority.
He became aggressive and tried to corner me. I felt like he might expose me again or do something inappropriate, whether medical or sexual. I grabbed a mechanical pencil—a reusable one where you click a button to push out the graphite—and threatened to stab him with it if he didn’t stop.
Instead of backing off, he became even more violent. He overpowered me, twisted my arms, and pushed me into a corner. His eyes were full of anger and wounded pride. He managed to take the pencil from me, clicked it so the graphite extended fully, and started stabbing my hand with it. He bent it painfully and broke it into pieces, as if he wanted to push the fragments into my skin.
I tried to fight back, but he was much stronger than me and I was losing.
When the train stopped, I managed to run out, but he followed me, continuing to try to hurt me. I saw a young man around my age and begged him to stay with me and not leave me alone. I hugged him and cried because I felt safe with him.”
Then I woke up, crying. I kept crying even after I realized it was just a dream.
I definitely had dreams like this before, but it has been so long and it shook me.