I didn’t want to feel today. Got really really high. I found some things.
Last night had wacky dreams. It was hard to sleep. I seem to be having a lot of “wandering an old and eclectic marketplace” dreams. Foreign place but I feel like maybe it’s actually my memory palace so to speak. It’s a visualization of the pathways in my brain and the memories stored there.
Often times I’m chased around by guards or someone looking for me to bring me back to some … institution. It was a hospital a couple nights ago this time a government research medical facility. Somewhere controlled… organized… under lock and key. Me wandering around the streets of my memory is dangerous.
So my brain makes it hard to know where I’ve come from and where I’m going. Doors shift, hallways change right after I walk down them… door numbers are written in code… brain trying everything to kick me out.
And then there’s the monkey imagery. A few weeks ago in a dream I rescued a baby chimp from two careless and reckless men. They dropped her and she was bloody. My dad was randomly there to make me feel cautious about helping the chimp .. cast doubt.. because she might be dangerous. Or maybe, he just doesn’t want me to learn certain truths?
I rescued her. Tonight a different monkey. Personified monkey character that was like a young pre teen girl. Curiously followed me down the streets of this labyrinth as I continued to get lost.. I just needed to keep moving or I might get caught.
Tonight I asked the monkey girl. What is this place? And she said everything here is what I already know. Be careful… but she’s there to help navigate. Stay away from the research facility..dangerous they’ll experiment on me there.. they won’t let you out. You’ll be incapacitated and they’ll do things to you.
But I know my answers are deeper in the labyrinth not out here.. So against her guidance, to stay on the outskirts, she wants to keep me safe…. I go back in.. back into the marketplace maze and closer to the medical facility, more guards will be around..
***
Last night’s dream is hazy but in my THC fueled meditation I find the dreamscape again, I find one of the scenes from last night’s dream but this time I’m more aware. I can look closer at the clues. There was a basement.. owned by a Latin drug lord. I went down in this dream to see more but I was scared. I hid in a huge pile of laundry nearby on the basement floor. [I just realized that my complete abhorrence of doing laundry might be related to the fact that my strongest CSA memory occurred in a basement laundry room…].
This time I look at the man. A young Latin man… powerful. Subdued naked women being forced to do his bidding, hunched over and sad. A basement. The feeling of concrete. Laundry piles nearby.
It’s my experience with my cousin.
I’m back there again. Except now I remember other things. I think he kissed me. Young inexperienced lips on mine…I froze. I didn’t respond.
I keep feeling a naked body rubbing up against mine. I kept thinking we couldn’t keep doing this because we would be caught. I didn’t want to keep doing this. But he would find me. He would corner me at his house… or wherever we were and ask me to.. he wanted to feel me. He really liked me…
I can’t remember age 7 or 8 or 9… or 10… I moved a lot during those ages and then far away when I was 13/14… but by 11 or 12 we’d stopped hanging out with that side of the family as much anyway. When I saw him I was always scared.
It wasn’t that bad. I don’t know if it’s all true or how much. I just think maybe it was more than I can remember clearly.
I’m confused about the ages tho I can’t figure out why sometimes he appears so much older than me… or maybe it’s actually just bigger.
I’m scared. But I’m big… I’m big… it’s not happening now. I’m gonna try again later. For now, I rest.
***
I woke up feeling small. All I know is I spent most of the night small. So many body memories of being naked, little and pinned down. A few from first person perspective that were wild and scary.. seeing my own hips positioned upward with my arms pinned down. Feeling my small flat chest exposed, cool air across my nipples..cold. Little me, but also, the smallest me that I found in the well. Some of the body memories are hers. She didn’t talk to me… it was shown, she stirs now… but has nothing to say, just collapse from her – no one protected her.
Sometimes I hear the word “baby girl” and it makes me want to vomit. It’s what my dad still calls me but it makes my stomach churn. I hear it echo in my dreams sometimes.
I worked on not becoming flooded. It was a lot of memories but I practiced what Nichole told me… when it started to feel like too much I asked for the part to take a few steps back… so I could remain to listen and watch.
At one point, Darkness’ monster self appeared enraged and trying to scare us off. I knew what was happening though and through some coaxing I managed to get her to back off … I explained that it was okay… we weren’t being flooded.. we could handle it.
She hesitated but listened and faded back.
I woke up anxious. Feeling small. Feeling ashamed because I wasn’t supposed to talk about this. Little explaining that I was bad and that I deserved it. Why else would it happen so much. It’s my fault. Overwhelming sense of shame. Maybe I asked for it in some ways… I didn’t say no enough… I should have pushed him off me.
I know… not logical, just letting the thoughts flow through me. Scared. Need to take a break for now.
***
I’m sad. Last scene in Arcane is Jinx crying for what she’s lost.. for hope fading… the pain of that loss… she wants it all to go away… she wants others to suffer like she has… she fires off that missile with the lyrics “What could have been…” in the background.
Thats how I feel sometimes. I am starting to realize how much of my life and the decisions I’ve made have been about survival. What could my life have been if it didn’t have to be that way. If I had options to be myself, to have had the love and support to be who I was meant to be all along, instead of operating on a broken mind, fighting my way through life’s obstacles. Things could have been so much easier for me, had I just not been born to the family I was born to… or the color I am. I have spent my life — so much energy — doing everything I could to put distance between me and the hard things… my subconscious motivations pointed me towards anything that would help create a sense of security even if meant sacrificing my body in the process. Does that even make sense?
I’m heartbroken, and at the same time… I still… like who I am.
I’m still proud of who I’ve become despite that. That’s the torchlight of hope…lighting my way forward in the scariest, the darkest, of places.
*deep breathe*
I see why Ben sometimes gets emotional in talking to me about all this. It makes me feel good that he feels compassionate towards me…. emotional on my behalf. Because if I’m being honest… I wish I could feel it too. I just am so scared at the intensity of those emotions should I allow myself to share them with him, in that same small space… it might be like a floodgate bursting open… and it might not ever close.
*another deep breathe*
I will try to have compassion for myself today. It’s TK’s memorial.
Internally: Love you all. I’m sorry this happened to us…I’m struggling to really accept that it did… to me too… because it’s really scary. I know this, but thanks for sharing. Maybe we can treat ourselves to a special art night to make us feel better…. soon. <3