All Nightmare Long

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I wrote this post last night itself but ran out of balance on my cellphone and couldn't publish it then. Here it is now.
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29 September, 2009.

As I type this, I'm lying down - tired, irritated, angry and with a headache pounding my head. My day at the Cram School was not at all a good one. Neither was this morning one of my best. I woke up from a terrible nightmare.

I dreamt that was a transboy. A pre-operative female to male transgendered person. And, I was at the local McDonald's for a snack. There I needed to use the restroom. There was a queue of balding middle aged men in front of the men's room. I joined the queue, extremely concerned about passing as male. I hadn't had top surgery yet. The men would glance at me but then looked away as though I was an embarrassment. Nobody asked any questions, although.

Soon it was my turn and I was inside the restroom. Then, he came in. Skin unnaturally dark like black leather, an extremely ugly, contorted face. He was unusually thin - almost two dimensional - and extremely tall. He hardly looked human.

He was furious. He told me that I wasn't supposed to use this restroom. I replied something incoherent. He commanded that I strip down to prove I was a male. I refused. He growled that I was a disgusting freak and did not deserve to be in this restroom. Advancing on me threateningly, he said that he was going to show me my place. I knew what was going to happen but somehow, I couldn't move to save myself. I was rooted to the spot in extreme fright. Then all of a sudden my Dad was at the door. I pleaded him to save me but he was somehow frozen still as a statue. He could do nothing.

What happened then, I'm unsure. It's a blur. Next thing that I do remember was that I was running with terror tearing at my heart. And I was crying.

I was crying and running through the Cram School but the place was unrecognizable. It seemed as if the building and its corridors had fed themselves and grown like branches of a tree.

Dad was running alongside me. We had both escaped - how, I know not. I told him I needed to talk to a lady who works at the cram school about the assault. 'Sexual assault' - I remember using that phrase. Strangely enough, I have never talked to this lady in my life but in this dream I believed that she was a counselor and could help me.

We found her sitting with some other kids near an artificial fountain. I told her I had been sexually assaulted. She looked kindly at me and asked us to follow her to her office. We made to follow her. Dad was a little way ahead of me and had just entered the building with the counselor at which instant, my assailant came out of nowhere and attacked me, once more.

I managed to fight him off and tore blindly into the building to find myself in an unfamiliar dark corridor with the assailant in hot pursuit. I fled for my life. The corridor came to a dead end ahead and I was trapped. Terrified. The walls loomed in front of me. I turned around. He was approaching on legs that were long - too long. Then he was towering over me. I slipped through the gap between his legs and ran. He skidded and stumbled before turning around to pursue me again. Even as I ran from him, I knew his long legs would catch up with me soon - but suddenly I was clear of the dark corridor and was running in twilight on a street. I ran around a bend and found myself some distance away from the counselor's office where Dad also was. Across the street from the counselor's office, there was a kiosk where a policeman and a policewoman were selling magazines and newspapers. My assailant lurked around the bend, not daring to come any nearer.

At that moment I realized that I had patches of beard growing on my face like knots of grass. Suddenly the point of view changed and I was looking at myself. My face looked hideous with those weird patches of hair on it. The point of view switched back to mine.

I told Dad that I was going to tell the cops. But the cops ignored me. They were too busy arranging magazines. A bull came charging out of nowhere and demolished the kiosk with a single ram of his horns. The very next moment, my assailant was upon me.

I screamed in anguish - it might have been a moan, I don't know. I turned on my side and suddenly my eyes flew open. I found myself drenched in cold sweat and tangled in sheets. I ran a palm across my cheeks to find them reassuringly smooth. Realizing that it had been only a nightmare, I glanced at the clock which said 7.06 AM. Lying back down, I let it all sink in. I was shaking - physically and mentally.

This nightmare somehow managed to combine some of my fears into one sucker punch - public restroom phobia, anxiety of gender presentation in public, body image issues, the stupid cram school etc.

I now know of another fear that had been lurking in some corner of my subconscious until this morning, when it was brought to the fore by a traumatizing dream.

Getting over a nightmare is easy and I think I almost have... but what happens to those who must live with the knowledge that their worst nightmare has become, in fact, a crippling reality?