tldr; truly one of the worst experiences
I went on this cruise with my friend Emily, my mom, and my mom's friend. It was one of the cruises where you were allowed to stay somewhere that wasn't the ship when it docked overnight, so we stayed at an AirBnB... fOr ThE cUlTuRe. It belonged to this super well-off youngish guy who didn't particularly care about the happenings at this property. He stayed in the main house, and we had the pool house to stay in. The property itself was pretty private (and still close to the ship!), but within the property it seemed like there was no privacy at all. All the windows had no blinds or curtains, and the walls of the pool house were essentially shutters that you flip to close for privacy. I assumed this was because of the warm climate and lack of rain? I don't know.
There was another family staying in another pool house-type building on this property, but it was a (large) nice family who were celebrating their daughter's birthday. She was in her older teens I think but I'm not sure what age she was celebrating. They didn't seem to speak English. The property owner said the pool was open 24 hours a day and that he wouldn't be around to bother us but if we needed him we could go knock on his door anytime. Nice guy.
You know how when you're at the beach or in a pool and you're thinking about when you want to leave so that you know when you should get out of the water and dry off as much as you can before the drive so that you're not soaking wet for the rest of the day? That's where I was at. We had plans to explore this city a little and I was back-timing so that I could be ready to go on-time. We didn't have to be back on the ship until the next morning, so we were really lounging and taking our time.
Remember that we were staying in that weird-non-privacy pool house... I brought my towel and clothes into one of the rooms to get changed. It was just my group around at this point but I didn't particularly want the house owner to see/watch me get changed. I was struggling to figure out how the shutter-walls moved so that I could change in peace... turns out it's all these little tiny like 1x1ft shutters that you have to do individually? So I close as many as I could without doing the whole wall (for time's sake) and quickly realized I left the bottoms of my outfit and my phone (of course) in another room, and I was already out of my bathing suit. Since it was just my group around the property at this time, I thought maybe I could just run over to grab it and my group wouldn't care, and if the property owner saw my butt, so be it.
Just as I was about to open the door (why are there doors with no real walls actually?) the other family that was staying there came in with their entire group and started (or continued) to sing "Happy Birthday" to the daughter. I couldn't see her through the cracks of the door but it seemed like a cute moment. I was waiting for them to leave or at least for the men disperse so that I could go grab my stuff. They didn't budge. They were all standing around and talking, visiting, being merry. At one point I decided I'd waited long enough and just put my bathing suit bottoms back on to go grab my stuff.
It all happened really fast and I don't know the ins and outs of it, but this Big Happy Family was anything but. From the time I put my bottoms back on to the time I went to open the door, a couple of people had been brutally murdered. So I RAN my ass off that property and into the city, hoping to be spared. There wasn't time to find my mom, her friend, and my friend. I just had to hope they were okay or were already out. I kept trying to get into contact with my mom (I must have grabbed my phone, or someone else's phone, on the way out or something?) but she kept acting like nothing had happened. I know she was there when it happened, where else could they have been? They wouldn't have left without me...
I refused to go back there that night until I was sure that they were gone. I had to just survive on the streets of this foreign-to-me city until the morning when I could get back onto the ship. But I'm still in just a t-shirt and my bathing suit bottoms. Not the best or safest outfit to be stranded in.
It was all a blur, but by the morning I had tried to make my way back to the property to get my things and find my group, but was having a hard time getting in contact with my mom. And anytime I did, she was acting so weird... There's a common symptom of schizophrenia where when someone isn't based in reality anymore they start talking like they're someone else, with this monotone, flat, calm voice, and their brain has convinced them of a new reality (usually that they're somebody else), but it fills in all these blank spaces with lies. My mom was acting like that, gaslighting me into thinking this was normal and fine and that we/they were safe and to just come back to the property so we can go to the ship together. She said I was being irrational, crazy, unsafe, dramatic.
I eventually cracked. I was bawling my eyes out on the curb on the side of the road somewhere, low-key struggling to even find my way back to the property. I told her I couldn't trust anyone and it's scary and frustrating and I couldn't understand how she thought that any of this was okay. I kept questioning everything she was telling me and she had that flat, monotone voice responding to me in the most calm ways, which made me even angrier and more panicked.
I was on the phone with her when I made it back to the ship, but we both realized in that moment that I needed my passport to get back on the ship. Which I didn't have. Because I couldn't have gone back to the property to get my things. She was just laughing everything off like it wasn't serious or criminal or dangerous, and at this point I was just trying to make sure we stayed in contact so that I could find them safe and then deal with her crazy ass. I managed to sneak into a door leading to a hallway, both of which were somehow unmanned/unstaffed, and I had to find my way back to our room. I couldn't breathe, I had no shoes, I was still basically unclothed, sunburnt, tired, hungry, thirsty, terrified, still bawling my eyes out, sobbing, hyperventilating; and she was still playing it cool over the phone.
And then I woke up.
So I've been having terrible nightmares like this a lot lately, and I don't really understand why. It's been months since I've watched anything overly fucked up like murder documentaries and stufff like that, which is the typical cause of weird dreams I think. I also haven't been in a depressive episode in quite some time, though today as I'm processing this dream still, I'm realizing maybe I'm entering one?
I *did* however recently watch about a third of a documentary of this girl who killed her mother, but the documentary was only detailing how her actions and words were indicating she was schizophrenic, which is probably why that was such a big part of this dream. But it doesn't explain other dreams I've had recently! Or my mood! I don't get it! Send a diagnostics team!
xo,
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