20/2/26 - Been having strange dreams for the last few nights, each varying in intensity. The thing is, they're all lucid dreams. That might be good in some respects, but in many it isn't, because they are nightmares of my own making that I cannot break free from. For example, a few nights ago, I had a dream where I was assaulted on a train. Whilst the man was on top of me, my lungs seized up and I couldn't breathe. I knew I was dreaming. I knew it wasn't real. But it felt real and when I woke up, my lungs were pressed, like I'd been broken on the wheel.
But last night was okay. I dreamt I was at an open-air street food market in Bangkok, buying an aloe juice drink for 10 baht.
23/02/26 - And I wish it had been, because this was horrid, I woke up with a dry mouth and a stomach squeezed. A boa around my abdomen. For some reason I could smell old, stale turmeric.
In the dream, my niece was being beaten by a man that my sister had living with her. I don't remember the man, just the cries of my niece, and I told my sister that she should be ashamed of herself, because she simply did not care. I said,
"It's lucky that John has some sense."
I have no idea who John is, or was; or rather who he is meant to represent. In the dream, my throat hurt from screaming, my cheeks swollen with tears, hot water stinging my eyes. I sat in the downstairs toilet of my parents' house, staring down at the pale terracotta tiles, pupils tracing the cracks. My mother's laundry basket was full of sodden black clothes. I was the only person to ever wear enough black to warrant an entire basket, though I did not remember doing any laundry, and besides, why would I be doing it at my mother's house?
In the bathroom, my chest constricted. I began to cry anew. Inexplicably, I was holding a blade.
And when I woke up -