I had this dream the night before last. I've only just had time to write it up. I barely feature in it at all; it feels more like watching a film with interactive feelings. I have the sensation that it means something, but I can't tell, for the life of me, where it might fit into my own life... Any help with analysing it would be appreciated.

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I was being taken to a mental institution of some kind. It wasn’t like you see in films where we were locked in cells at night or anything like that. It was more that we were given a home next to the hospital; shared housing, and we went to sessions like classes at school.
I’m fairly sure I started out as myself. I was to be put on a waiting list because there wasn’t space. After that, I was following over the shoulders of a young boy (he was probably about twelve or fourteen years old) – watching and feeling what he did, but not actually being him.
This boy was a little simple minded – he didn’t understand a lot of the things going on around him. He was happy enough though. He liked being in the hospital homes, he enjoyed the therapy/treatment sessions and he was friendly with the doctors and other patients. (It was quite a pleasant way to feel, actually. He didn’t worry about the future or work and he didn’t need to concern himself with food or clothes or anything. It was like being a young teenager again, but without the need to fit in with others around you. He just was – he was him, he was there and whatever was around him was what was there.)
He shared his house with an older boy, probably about seventeen or eighteen. This boy had suffered some kind of trauma, I sensed, but I don’t think I found out what. He was intelligent, and the doctors had been working to help him face this trauma and move on. He was at the very end of his treatment course, and he was looking forward to going out into the world and starting his life. The two boys were very close to one another, but there was no sense of loss from the younger one at the elder’s imminent departure. He was happy to see someone moving on to what they wanted. (Again, he was content with good things happening to others. He seemed to like being in limbo – watching others move on. I got the impression that he had been there a very long time and had watched many people going through the system.)
The older boy took the younger for a meal out – somewhere like McDonalds, I think. They were eating, and the younger boy was watching a mother sitting nearby. She was telling off her son (probably about seven or eight years old) for eating too much, and wouldn’t let him have more jam. (I don’t know why the jam, but… there we go!) The boy I was following felt sorry for her son, and went over to him when the mother left him alone for some reason. He talked to the child – being his natural, friendly self and giving him jam he, for some reason, had. Mentally, this boy was closer in age to the one I followed in the dream, and they got along well. I don’t know what happened to the older boy or the mother, but the two younger boys left together and went to play outside.
They headed into what seemed an obviously bad part of town – exaggeratedly so (rubble all over the place, cars and buildings on fire etc), but were totally oblivious to it. They were approaching a corner when the child’s mother appeared again, taking her son and pulling him away from the other boy. She yelled at the boy I followed. He didn’t understand why she was angry, and was dragged by her around the corner they’d been near. Around there was a train, derailed and on its side, burning fiercely. For some reason, this image made it through to him where the rest hadn’t. He realised why she was angry, and ran away back to his house. He was shaken by this, and didn’t really know how to deal with it, I sense. Perhaps reality was a bit much for him? He lived in a safe, comfortable bubble and the train and the woman’s anger was outside this sphere.

The next day was the older boy’s leaving day. He was on his way to the front door, but before he could open it, someone knocked on it. He opened it as the younger boy was coming down the stairs, and found the police outside.
The woman had called them, accusing the younger boy of ‘inappropriate’ interactions with her child. The older boy defended him, explaining his situation and state, telling them that he was harmless, just no different to a very small child himself. All the while, the young boy stood on the stairs behind him, not really feeling much of anything. I don’t know if he didn’t understand what was happening, or if he just trusted the other boy to deal with things.

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The dream kind of trails off there; I don’t remember if there was more.

This is my first time posting a dream for interpretation, so if I've missed anything I should have added, please let me know and I'll put it in. (I've tried to make it as detailed as I can remember, like the sticky says, but I've not put anything about myself since I don't know quite what would be relative. - I'm not a boy, for a start, I suppose. And I'm 27 years old, so not a child as such either.)