It started with my friends, just a normal day of hanging out, waiting maybe to roleplay or just shoot the breeze, and then those weren't my friends and I wasn't an adult, and we were just siblings hanging out. Maybe I wasn't even me anymore. I know that I wouldn't have had the guts to do what she did.
It was a stepfather or a friend or something along those lines, who came into the little reunion, pushing his weight, making sure things went HIS way. And I, or she, saw it happened with increasing trepidation. Everyone around moved to accomodate him, the little family suddenly turned upside down. It couldn't exactly have been the father because I remember than when the guy finally scared her, she asked to talk to her father in private, now, URGENTLY. (He might have been the mother's new boyfriend and the father was trying to help him fit into the family.)
He wanted to tell him that this guy frightened her, he made her feel uncomfortable, and more than that, that she was scared of where it could lead to. She wanted to tell her father that if HE was staying, she was leaving. She was near old enough and they had just recently moved into a small town where everything would be cheaper and she could make it on her own.
But then the guy came in, cool as breeze, just want to hang out, whatcha guys talking about, here I saved you some pizza, why are you looking so upset?
I think I would have lost my nerve then and there, that's how I knew she wasn't me. I would have waited for another moment alone with my dad, some other situation that wouldn't be quite SO awkward. But SHE? She was fearless! This was the hand she had been dealt so she would play it. She continued talking, told her father everything she wanted to tell him and when he didn't side with her, she didn't wait to hear the guy complain. How could she SAY these things? How could she think of him so badly? He'd never done ANYTHING to her!
No... not yet...
She left the room and asked her siblings and friends to please help her make a going-away bag, help her get her things, help her get away. She didn't wait and didn't give him a chance to screw her over. She left and waited for a friend (not a sibling now, but one of MY friends, I remember that made sense in pure dream logic) to bring her things. He was able to do that only halfway, and suddenly the guy and her family were looking for him and she was terrified now. She knew in her heart of hearts that there would be retaliation and that it would get UGLY. She didn't even want to have to see the guy, or give him the chance of knowing where she was going or where she was staying.
So she didn't.
She walked around the little town and it was at times Queretaro or Cuernavaca where I have friends living there, and she was at times a stranger or a friend I know and admire very much. At the beginning of her dream story I had thought her young, just barely an adult, but now she was my friend, bound and determined to prove she had previously supported herself before and would do so again now. She didn't need any of them.
In my dream she moved from place to place, waiting for her friends to bring her things. Quite evocatively, some of thise places were churches. She made sure he never found out where exactly she settled down. She escaped him completely.
I recently heard a story very like this one and it might have colored my dream perceptions. I remember waking up energized, with a sense of purpose and hope. I'd gone to sleep late last night, reading, knowing that I would pay for those reading hours the next day at work. I wonder if this was my mind's way of bailing me out?