Hello. I'm new here, and this is my first post. I probably should be making an intro post or something, but those always make me uncomfortable, so I'll just get to the dream bit.

This afternoon (morning for me, I'm a night owl) I had a relatively normal dream that had a small section that was very disturbing and upsetting. I've looked around for meanings to the symbolism, but I'm having a very hard time piecing it together into something that makes sense, and can't work how any of the symbolic meanings apply to things going on in my life right now. I'm hoping that maybe having someone else's eyes look at it might help out, or maybe offer interpretations of things that are different from the research I've done.

Some background information: I'm 25 and biologically female, though I have a lot of gender confusion...I'm not certain I'm transgendered, though I would prefer to be an effeminate male, I still enjoy wearing girls clothes (shirts especially). I don't feel that I think like a girl. 99% of the time I'm male in my dreams unless there's some specific meaning to me being female (rejecting feminine identity, wearing unwieldy high heels and a long dress in a chase situation). I'm currently going through a high-stress period and have to move at the end of the month without yet having a place to move (though I have a grace period of a month, the close friend I'm moving out with doesn't). Some of the issues I frequently dream about are family abandonment (I've been disowned on religious grounds and am unable to speak to my close-knit family, though I'd like to), not fitting in, detachment from the world, and symbols that frequently come up are chase scenes, zombies (nearly every dream until very recently), dark abandoned houses with many stories, and lakes (usually calm and serene). Something else worth mentioning is that I'm very rarely myself in dreams, and often take the form of a character. Oftentimes my 'consciousness' or myself will jump from person to person in a dream, or I will watch it like a movie. It is incredibly rare that I'm just me in a dream.

Anyhow, that aside, here's the part of the dream that confused me.

I had been staying in a small cabin with a group of friends, it was not a run-down type of place at all, but we had left it for the day and gone off to do something else. I realized that I had forgotten some chocolate at the cabin, and begged to go back to get it, which we did. It's of note that I none of the friends I was with were friends that I actually have, though they felt like friends in the dream, they weren't my real-life friends. Also, I was female in the dream (a rarity) and did not look like myself.

We went back to the cabin and went inside, and it was very dark, different than when we left it. Me and another girl who I felt a slight sense of rivalry with went inside the building to get our things, and we saw pale forms moving in the darkness, which I thought were rats. I got my chocolate, with a feeling of forboding, and we met up again in the main room. When we did, we were both attacked by the rats that were crawling all over the shelves and furniture. Both me and the girl were bitten in the hand by the rats - she was bitten quickly with one large deep wound and the rat jumped off her as she ran outside, and I was bitten by a tenacious white and brown rat that wouldn't let go even when I left the building. I had to tear the rat off by repeatedly yanking it back and forth, which left an extensive wound up my hand.

My wound and hers were both of equal severity, but for some reason the group chose to pay attention to her, fawning over her and acting as if her wound was more serious than it was, and mine was nothing. An attractive man in the group who I wanted attention from chose to bandage her hand lovingly and take her to a bath in a lovely hotel room with a sunny balcony and lovely white curtains that moved in the wind - it was really beautiful there, overlooking a calm blue ocean with white beaches that could have come out of a tourist pamphlet. The dream suddenly shifted with the group sharing this hotel room.

I was left in the corner of the balcony to bandage my own wounds, and I was nervous and disgusted because I had no disinfectant. I wrapped the wound and sat in the corner of the balcony in a shadow and started to cry because I felt forgotten and abandoned. This is the most emotion I've shown in a dream for several years.

While this was happening, a ghost witch started appearing to the other woman who'd been bitten. We realized that the rat attack had been something this ghost witch was trying to use to kill us or hurt us - at the time we thought she was evil. I was still in the corner crying, but my 'consciousness' shifted to the other bitten woman, not into her mind but to focus on her. She fought off the ghost witch with the help of the attractive man, though the details on how it happened are sketchy and I don't remember them. I feel like it wasn't important.

Feeling like she was safe, she relaxed in the bath until she saw a form outside - the ghost witch, who was an attractive young blonde woman with an angelic face and long curly hair. She wore a very long flowing blue satin dress, and both it and her hair floated in an invisible breeze - she smiled and had blue eyes to match her dress. She was somewhat translucent. The rat-bitten woman went out onto the deck and tried to stay away from the ghost, glaring at her and being defensive, but the ghost reached out, took her wrist, and abruptly looked very solid. The rat-bitten woman had gone with her to another plane, and there was a sensation of deep calming and acceptance, tinged with an undercurrent of raw terror.

The point of view switched back to me, where I was still sitting in the corner of the balcony trying to fight off my fit of tears. I got a feeling of deep, very cold dread that gripped me, and I knew I would be next to be whisked away by the ghost witch woman (the blonde one). And I had no help from any of my now-absent friends to fight her, I had to do it alone.

At this point my alarm went off, and I had to get up. Stupid work.