We Can Still Use Our Bodies For Love

A Healing Message About Detransition From a Dream

I woke in a cold sweat, my mind filled with the dream’s vivid edges, the images still pressing against my chest. In it, Vincent stood before me, but he was different—thin, almost hollow, as if carved out by invisible hands, his figure wavering as if caught in a wind I couldn’t feel. His face was stricken, eyes searching mine, while his form flickered between strength and fragility. I reached out, sensing the familiar but strange terror he embodied, a terror that mirrored so much of what I felt in my own body during my detransition.

When I shared the dream with Vincent, expecting his thoughtful analysis, he cried. "Do you know what you’ve captured here?" he asked. I didn’t, not entirely. I had only hoped he might understand it, help me unravel its meaning. But he saw something I hadn’t, something profound in its rawness. The dream, he said, was an uncanny mirror of the torment he’s seen in so many struggling with anorexia and body dysmorphia—the feeling of being in battle with your own body, waging war against the flesh, shrinking yourself until you can hardly hold yourself up.

“Can I share this?” he asked, wanting to offer my dream as solace, a shared reality, to his followers—detransitioners, anorexia survivors, anyone navigating the unrelenting tides of body dysmorphia. He runs a support group, Bridging the Gap, where he holds space for the stories of those like us, people who’ve journeyed to the edges of identity and back, scarred but more whole.

Here is the dream:

“I had a dream that we were at a conference. I was sitting next to some people that were complaining a lot about you and you being a man. I defended you. Then there was an escalation for some reason of you and me in the spotlight against these critics. But you revealed that you were still suffering from anorexia.

You took off your shirt showing a very bony body, dangerously thin. And gaping holes in your chest. It was horrible. Then you started to be in pain and very weak as if the anorexia symptoms were increasing. I had to hold you to prop you up cause you were so weak. Then on your head your hair and skin began falling away as if you were being burned. Your flesh looked like a severe burn victim all over your skull and neck and body. You were in a lot of pain.

I very gently held your head for comfort. This was in front of everyone at an outdoor conference center stage. It felt like I was taking care of you and nobody else was understanding or cared. Even when your skin burned off it was like if I wasn’t there you wouldn’t get any help. You looked like a burned up skeleton and it was scary and repulsive but I defended you and protected you with unconditional love. The last part of the sequence was you very weakly resting your burned head against me because you were hurt but too weak to hold yourself up on your own”.