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2:36am December 16, 2013

I just had a horrible dream that I’m sure was PTSD-induced.

I was living in an institution. It allowed us a fair amount of freedom, for an institution. We could live anywhere on the huge grounds, in tiny houses or sprawling mansion-like houses.

I chose one room of this enormous house that spread from the middle of the grounds, curving over, to one edge. I had all my stuff in that room and slept there alone. Nobody else but occasionally one woman, even slept in that building so I had the run of the whole place.

Eventually this one woman’s boyfriend started threatening her life. And then he started terrorizing me and many other residents. He’d break into our rooms, scream threats through the windows at night, etc.

Most were too afraid to report it, but I did. I kept telling them how many witnesses I had, but they kept saying I needed two people other than me, who’d seen and heard this stuff at the exact same time as me. I had a whole string of witnesses but it was always separately. Me alone, them alone, or me and one other person. So they kept ignoring me.

One day this man walked up to me and said, condescending-staff-voice, “I’ve been sent to teach you how to distinguish what is real.”

I was furious. I knew their rule was accept nothing as real unless it was confirmed by at least two people. I knew they were trying to prove the threats weren’t real.

He asked me, “How do you know what is real?”

I said, “You can never totally know. But if you see something, you can be pretty sure. If another person sees it, you can be even more sure. The more people see it, the more sure you are.”

He was nonplussed, to put it mildly, because now he had nothing to teach me. He said, “I’ll be frank with you. We are concerned you don’t know what reality is because you were once diagnosed psychotic.”

I said, “But everyone knows that was a misdiagnosis,” and was going to say that even if you’re psychotic you can still be right about reality, and then woke up.

I hate dreams like that.