Nightmare last week had the dance studio personified as a demon. I was at a deserted Macy's, the only customer. I looked at the beautiful clothes and gushed about how I was glad there was a Macy's. The demon was a petite old woman with deep furrowed wrinkles, but not ugly, with some makeup. You could also spy some kind of netting under her perfect blond bob. I began to feel effects of being poisoned while shopping. I had brought in several tote bags that I was struggling to carry around the store (maybe symbolic of emotional baggage I carried with me from my past). I began to pass out, and started asking where my underwear was, and as I was on the ground near blacking out, the demon says in a cold voice, "Beauty is more than some kind of pageant."

Thinking back to last Monday's dance lesson, had an odd conversation with an elderly man. He kept repeating that his back hurt and how stupid he was for trying to lift heavy books and he wasn't able to dance. "can't fix stupid." He also said something about dance teachers and how they can tell a lot about someone just by dancing to a three minute song. Then he asked something about religion and I quoted a verse from Ephesians, the one about all things are permissible for me but not all things are good for me. I moved onto dancing with someone else b cause I felt uncomfortable for some reason.

I don't worry about this conversation, but his comments about his back hurting reminded me of a theory I have about why my dance teacher had so little sympathy for me and assaulted me. He has an amputee relative. His work with the amputee community is featured on the dance studio website. When I took dance lessons, it was right after a pretty traumatizing vascular surgery and I often found myself talking about my leg problems. I think he may have felt my leg problems weren't " that bad" compared to "real" amputee problems; just something else that led to me getting kicked in the butt and vagina. They REALLY didn't like me at that studio. Mr. Saintly was seen as a victim of me; the female boss ran after him to see if his foot was okay after I screamed and walked away from being assaulted. That image really doesn't help my self esteem.

I was praying for some kind of sign that I'm not crazy and this was real or something. I saw the Conjuring 2, as my husband and I were walking out, I saw three dance instructors from the studio walking into the movies. I didn't feel anything and didn't want to talk to them. That's a relief.

I just feel this curiosity and interest in the local dance community right now, even though I will never step foot in that dance studio again.

I had another nightmare a few days later. I don't know how to stop them.