I dreamt all night of domestic violence and coffee. I wanted coffee so much! I kept going from place to place… Kroger, Starbucks, McDonald’s, various gas stations, diners… Everywhere I went, I was assaulted physically as soon as I asked for or tried to buy coffee. After the first few assaults, I contacted the police and they didn’t believe me. They pushed me around hard and threatened me for lying to them.

Suddenly, I was in court defending myself for “lying to the police” about being assaulted over and over. I wasn’t lying and I still had cuts and bruises all over my face and body. The judge laughed at my story. When I showed him a large (and obvious!) bloody gash on my eye, he kept saying he couldn’t see it. Same denial with the bruises on my cheeks, arms, and abdomen. Every clear and harsh cut or abrasion on my body, he kept saying wasn’t there and he was mad that his time had been wasted since I “clearly” hadn’t been assaulted. The more he pretended not to see the blaring cuts and bruises all over me and my body right in front of his face, the harder I sobbed and got hysterical and begged him to see what was right in front of him.

He put me in jail for lying about being assaulted and because I had sobbed hysterically in court so badly that even when he told me to stop, I couldn’t make the sheer hysteria stop coming out of me like a tsunami cease. The harder I tried to stop, the more hysterical my sobs got.

The last thing I recall was being in jail . In jail, I was offered coffee with my morning meal! When I eagerly and gratefully accepted the coffee, two crisp blue guards guffawed saying, “You still haven’t learned your lesson, huh?”

It finally stopped with me begging the guards not to hurt me for accepting the proffered coffee.