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--- trauma [2026/05/26 05:32] – created jaime
+++ trauma [2026/05/26 19:42] (current) – ["It was all real" nightmare] jaime
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 When I was four years old, I woke up one morning, fog-brained and emotionally numb, yet crying my eyes out for some reason I didn't understand, and found I had no memory of anything that had ever happened in my life prior to that point. I went and played with some toys but couldn't stop crying. My mother sat me down on a stool and interrogated me as to why I was so upset, and I found myself telling a story I didn't recognize. "He peed on my tummy." I was able to elaborate to some extent and tell my mother I was referring to my father. The entire time I was speaking, I didn't know where the words were coming from. I wasn't intentionally fabricating them, but I didn't remember what I was talking about, either. They were just spilling out of my mouth, and I had no ability to control their content.
-My mother has told me that at that time, she examined me intimately for evidence of anything he had done. She did find evidence, but it was inconclusive: namely, noticeable gaping. She has also told me that the night before, she fell asleep at the dining table, and woke up with an awful headache, and suspected my father had spiked her drink. She has also told me that he used to regularly have untrustworthy friends over who were known domestic abusers and/or cheaters, and she felt a need to try to protect me from contact with them, and he would try to negotiate with her to get me out of the house to go see them. None of this is absolute proof, but taken together, it strikes me as great cause for suspicion.
+My mother has told me that at that time, she examined me intimately for evidence of anything he had done. She did find evidence, but it was inconclusive: namely, noticeable gaping. She has also told me that the night before, she fell asleep at the dining table, and woke up with an awful headache, and suspected my father had spiked her drink. She has also told me that he used to regularly have untrustworthy friends over who were known domestic abusers and/or cheaters, and she felt a need to try to protect me from contact with them, and he would try to negotiate with her to get me out of the house to go see them or get me alone in a room with them. None of this is absolute proof, but taken together, it strikes me as great cause for suspicion.
 CPS dismissed our criminal case due to insufficient evidence to prosecute, but we brought civil charges, and the evidence, whatever it may have been, //was// strong enough for //preponderance.// Accordingly, we were able to win a restraining order and a child support agreement.
+===== Aftermath =====
+I have treatment-resistant depression, EDNOS, recurring nightmares, and, most tellingly, anxiety attacks and intense crying spells that happen when I think about or engage with the sorts of things that theoretically would probably remind me of my trauma if I remembered it. (Obviously there is of course also the [[amnesia]] itself.)
 ===== Nightmares =====
-TODO
+==== Shadowy figure ====
-===== Aftermath =====
+The most prominent recurring symbol in my nightmares is a [[headmates:dad|shadowy figure]] representing my father.
+Nightmares I've had about him, not exhaustive:
+  * I tried to leave the house, and he stood across the way and stared at me, freezing me in place and making me unable to leave. Every time I blinked, he would suddenly be closer.
+  * He proposed to me. On what was to be the day of our wedding, he took me to a featureless white room. The door disappeared. Everything froze, and suddenly I was on the floor with his hands around my throat. The room shook and started turning red, and though he was not moving his lips, I could hear him speaking directly into my mind. I couldn't make out what he was saying because the voice was pitched-down and distorted.
+  * His face stared up at me from inside a toilet bowl.
+Waking nightmare-like occurrences:
+  * There have been several times I was falling asleep and thought I saw his face in the texture of the dried paint on the walls or ceiling.
+  * There have been several times I've woken up in the middle of the night with sleep paralysis and seen him standing over my bed and watching me.
+  * I used to have a phobia of being alone in a room. My eyes would fix on the door. If it was open, I would be paralyzed with fear about who would be the next person to walk in or walk by. If it was closed, I would be paralyzed with fear about who would be the next person to open it. I think, on some level, I was always expecting it to be him, come back to abuse me again.
+==== Mannequins ====
+Mannequins have frequently appeared in a few recurring nightmares:
+  * I used to dream about [[headspace:mannequin city|a whole city where everyone was a mannequin]]. You would only know when they would turn around to look at you. It seems clear to me this dream symbolized the disorganized attachment I experienced with my mother.
+  * I used to dream that I was being taken somewhere in the car and would be trying to hold a conversation with the driver, but the driver would not respond, and then I would discover they were actually a mannequin. Then the car would crash or fall off a cliff because no one was actually driving.
+==== Abandoned elementary school ====
+I used to dream often about an [[headspace:abandoned elementary school]] where a pulsating black mass would chase me through the halls and playgrounds. I believe these dreams symbolized the bullying I endured.
+==== Suitcase nightmare ====
+I had a dream that I was digging through a [[headspace:suitspace|suitcase]] on the [[headspace:bedroom|bed]] with my mother and looking for a pill bottle. We found the pill bottle, expecting it to incriminate my father. Instead, the name we found on it was that of the person who ran the daycare(?)
+The dream then rewound to what I was to understand was an earlier point in time. A strange man had the same suitcase laid out on the same bed. He opened it, and I was curled up inside, naked, bruised, and awake but unresponsive. He lifted me out of the suitcase and lay me sprawled out on his bed.
+I was allowed semantic understanding, but not actually shown, that the way I had been put into that suitcase in the first place was this: Another man, maybe the same one, maybe not, maybe my father, maybe not, had beaten me to convince me to take a pill misleadingly offered to me as pain medication. "Take your medicine, little [[headmates:Jaime]]. It will make all that pain go away." The actual purpose was to drug me into a pseudocatatonic state to make me pliable and quiet so I could be loaded into the suitcase and smuggled out of the house without raising suspicion.
+==== Thighs nightmare ====
+I had a dream that I was in a [[headspace:hotel]]-like bedroom with an integrated bathroom. I was a child, in this dream, as with the others. I lay naked on the bed. The bathroom door was open to encourage me to watch as an unfamiliar man showered inside, preparing himself to join me. I looked away from him and down over my bare thighs. In the left, I felt excitement to be loved and wanted again. In the right, I felt terror, knowing from experience the violation it would cost.
+==== "It was all real" nightmare ====
+In this dream, I saw [[headmates:Singer]] in an unlit room in a [[headspace:cabin]]. She was sitting against the wall, with [[headmates:mom|her stuffed rabbit]] by her side. I crouched down across from her and listened to what she had to say.
+> All of it was real. You think you have it bad //now// just with what //you've// had to remember so far? You couldn't even //imagine// what //I// remember. //We// don't have the //luxury// of doubting it.
+==== "None of it was real" nightmare ====
-I have treatment-resistant depression, EDNOS, and, most tellingly, anxiety attacks and intense crying spells that happen when I think about the sorts of things that theoretically would probably remind me of my trauma if I remembered it.
+In this dream, my father---as himself, not as the shadowy figure that normally represents him---hosted me at his house to have sex with me in the living room on an air mattress. I didn't want to, but I went along with it anyway because I felt powerless to refuse, and politely made sure it didn't show through at all that I didn't like it. As he was having his way with me yet again, he praised me for my obedience, telling me he was so glad I had finally realized none of it had ever happened---including what we were doing at that very moment(!?)---and he was an innocent man and I had been brainwashed against him (which is an accusation he frequently made in real life).