My system, Abyss, was created through childhood trauma that I don't remember. Some adulthood trauma has also been mixed in there, since I retained the dissociative mechanism as a maladaptive coping skill later into life.

I know the trauma happened partly because of a small and loose handful of facts, but mostly because of an abundance of nightmares and aftermath symptoms.

I believe I have suffered the following traumatic experiences:

• It's my shaky understanding, largely reconstituted from sparse and abstract fragments of memories, that my father…
  • violently sexually assaulted me at home at least once;
  • repeatedly molested me in a gentler manner both at home and at outings;
  • at least once smuggled me out of the house in a suitcase to share with his friends;
  • and may have also molested me during supervised visitation.
• I am also more consciously aware that my mother yelled at me a lot and made me feel worthless and suicidal…
• … and that despite that, she loved me very deeply, and was my only friend, and it was traumatic for me when she passed away unexpectedly in my early adulthood.
• I'm also consciously aware that I was bullied extensively in elementary school, but don't remember most of it.

My mother and father had always had a very difficult relationship. He was struggling with addiction. He would verbally and I believe also physically abuse her. She would argue back just as viciously, but I don't think she ever hit him back. He also cheated on her with several other women, including at least one he conceived another child with.

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 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.

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.)

The most prominent recurring symbol in my nightmares is a 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 have frequently appeared in a few recurring nightmares:

• I used to dream about 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.