I think maybe I can write this now.

I had a nightmare this morning. It was a bad one. It seems kind of silly, now, that I should have been so frightened and am still so frightened that I'm shaking as I try to write this; the events were not at all spectacular. But It frightened me so badly I woke myself up screaming. I usually can't scream when I'm having nightmares; I just wake up. But this time I managed it.

It started out as one of those bathroom dreams: you know, the kind where you badly have to go to the bathroom and you can't fin a toilet, or you finally do find a toilet and just as you're about to attend to your business you realise it's standing in the middle of a crowded office. Or a lion is in there, or you have to aim and pee into this little tiny hole or something like that.

So, I'm looking for a bathroom and finding bathroom after bathroom that isn't suitable--one actually was in the middle of a crowded office and another was full of body parts and such. They kept getting more and more unsuitable until I finally found this big room with a dresser and a dirty toilet in it. And though the toilet was REALLY dirty, like, from the worst pit stop you've ever visited, I thought, "Fine, it'll do," because all the others were so very much worse and I had to go really badly by that time. So I sit down to pee and then I realise there's this guy in there and I realise it must be his bedroom I'm in, because he's getting ready for his day. And he's smearing this terrible strawberry-scented lotion through his hair and the smell is so strong it just makes me want to vomit, but he doesn't seem to be taking any notice of me so I just think I'll do my business and get out of there as soon as possible. But he's taking a really long time at it: even smearing the stuff through his armpit hair and all. And then he grabs me and starts smearing the stuff all over me and I can't get away and I can't get it off and I try fighting him but he's too strong for me. So I decide to scream for help and at first nothing came out but then it did and I woke myself up screaming. And I heard M. in the kitchen making his breakfast and he shouted "What the hell was that?" or something and came running in. And I had to get up because I was so freaked out.

So, being in a bathroom with a strange guy who was smearing strawberry-scented lotion on me was the essence of it. I felt so trapped and out of control. I wonder now if it was some throwback to the rape I suffered 25 years ago. Was there some hint of strawberry in the rapist's smell? I can't remember. And like I said, it seems silly now that I've written it. But it's still giving me the heebie jeebies even now.