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--- trauma [2026/05/26 18:19] – jaime
+++ trauma [2026/05/26 19:42] (current) – ["It was all real" nightmare] jaime
@@ Line 49: / Line 49: @@
   * 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 ====
+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).