I've been with this community for as long as the Moss Park injection site has existed, including when it was in the park. So, it's been eight years. I don't live in this community, but I'm quite attached to the folks that I get to spend time with here.

I've been taking Imovane to sleep for like, over a decade, so I sleep fine mostly, but I don't remember my dreams a lot. I think because I'm always medicated when I sleep. I worked shift work when I started nursing, so I think that really messed me up—working nights. I think I've been dreaming more recently and remembering my dreams more. More than usual.

I wish I dreamed more and remembered my dreams more. I know some people will dream a lot about their loved ones who have passed. And I wish, like, people in my life who've passed would visit me in my dreams, but it's never happened. So, I don't know. It's like a puzzle I needed to figure out, or I would like to figure out. Yeah. Some people can do it pretty well, but I've never been able to.

I have a lot of dreams where I'm wandering in a house or sometimes in hospitals, like a hospital at night where the lights are dimmed, but like, they can be hard to navigate sometimes in my dreams., I'm just like, walking in hospital corridors, not knowing which direction is the exit. I'm not working in the dreams. I'm not a nurse in the dreams. I'm wandering a hospital in some other capacity.

I had one particular dream about work that's really stuck with me, and it was one of those dreams where I woke up and I was like, “Oh, I'm supposed to hold onto this, this is telling me something.” I had this dream a few years ago. We have an amazing team right now, but I've been here since the beginning, so I've been through like every iteration of the team that's been here. And I remember [the dream happened when] it was not a particularly cohesive team. It was probably during COVID times, but there were a lot of people who were just unhappy in the work or frustrated, or the work wasn't what they thought it would be. I've seen a lot of people over the years where, in theory, their politics are in line, but in practice they struggle. And then they have this cognitive dissonance, “Do I actually like, care about people who use drugs, or do I dislike them?” And then it's, well, you know, it creates strife.

So, it was one of those times [when I had this dream], and I remember I had one particular coworker who would activate me. I think it was because they reminded me of a younger version of myself. So, I was bumping up against other versions of me. Not their fault, but to me they were a pain in the ass. They [had] very strong opinions about everything.

But I had this dream. I was dreaming about one of these pre-shift meetings we have. We were in the office, having a pre-shift meeting, and then this bird flew into the office. And what I've been taught is that if a bird flies into the house, you have to kill the bird. Because the bird's bringing a message and it may not be good. And the only way to stop the bad message is to kill the bird. So, in my dream, I picked up a binder and I was like, “I gotta kill the bird. I have to kill the bird.” And I was like picking up the binder and I was getting ready to like smack it down on the bird and [this co-worker] flew the binder out of my hands and was like, “You can't kill the bird!” And then the dream ended, and I woke up in this panic because I was like, “There was a bird in the house, something bad's gonna happen. There's a bird in the house, something bad's gonna happen. Why did I let them prevent me from killing the bird? [From] killing the bad message?” And that was it [laughs]. That was the dream. But it stuck with me. And I still think about it, about the kinds of energies that come through the door.

[Moss Park] has a day-to-day life. It has bureaucracy and logistics. It has an emotional life; it has a technical life. And it also has, like, a spiritual life. And [the dream] made me aware of that. And that sometimes we need to protect that piece as well. And I think we've gotten to a better place. But that was during a hard time where I felt like we were spiritually not very strong.

After I had that dream, I was worried for a while that something bad was gonna happen. Because in my mind, the bird was already in the house. So, I was kind of on edge for a while thinking something really bad was gonna happen. And I don't know that anything did, but I was definitely hypervigilant for a while. But I think the bad thing was already there, and that’s what [the bird] represented in the grand scheme of this place.

The dream made me more aware. [I shared it with] a couple people in my personal life. And I shared it with my boss too, who's into dreams. And she understood. I told her the dream, and she was like, “Yeah.” It made sense to her. It created some metaphorical texture, I guess, to something that we were experiencing together, but not necessarily talking about.

Honestly, I couldn't imagine myself being a nurse anywhere else. I wouldn't care to. I think anyone who works here for a long period of time finds that they do a lot of healing, because you end up having to confront and work through some pretty deeply ingrained stuff. In such a disconnected society, to be forced to figure out what community means, I feel like this place is so rich with that. There's a lot of people who are poor in this community, a lot of people struggling. But in so many ways it's so rich. It's hard to understand unless you're with it. It's really a very rich community.