That Thing You Did

When you have amnesia, you have puzzle pieces in your life that are swimming around, blank. They might have phrases wrapped around them, but they no experience inside of them. 

There's this one puzzle piece that has been swimming around for a long time, that has mystified and haunted me. 

The only words wrapped around this puzzle piece is: "Remember That Horrible Thing You Did at the Daycare."  

What did I do at the daycare?

What did my mom mean?

How is it that she has brought this up so many times over my life, and I've never understood what she meant?

And the energy with which she said I did this particular thing, well. I was scared! But I didn't know what she could possibly be referring to. 

And why didn't I ever ask her?

The same reason I never asked about anything terrifying. 

The same reason I immediately erased anything that felt like it threatened my life.

If it felt terrifying, it went right into the "That's Too Terrifying To Process" file in my brain, and it seeped into permanent oblivion. 

Until I felt safe enough to remember, that is.

I'm safe enough to remember, now, after five years of living with my partner and his family. For the first time in my life, I'm safe enough to remember puzzle pieces in my life that were previously blank.

And now I can start fitting those pieces together. 

Well, I remember doing a lot of things at "the daycare." 

You see, she's talking about the time I worked at a particular daycare, from the ages of 19 to 25. 

Geez, I could have done anything there. 

But there are a few particular incidents that I remember with an odd mix of both clarity and fuzziness that belong only to nightmares that you wake from in terror at night and hope desperately it was simply just a dream and nothing more. 

But I remember driving home after each of these incidents, and people don't drive home and eat dinner after a nightmare. 

Although I tried to tell myself that I did. 

If you tell yourself something happens the way you want it to have happened enough times, you can make it so.

But now I know it wasn't a dream. 

It happened.

I remember now, Mom.

I told everyone at the daycare that my parents were trying to kill me. 

Oh hey, Mom, I remember. 

I mean, I didn't mean to blurt it out. 

It started with a migraine and pre-seizures. My muscles became incredibly tight, spasming and contracting, yanking on the nerves on my spinal cord in my neck and back, yanking me about like a jerky marionette puppet. The spasms were excruciatingly painful, but the motions kept coming uncontrollably, causing more spasms in repetitive waves, again and again over hours. 

After awhile, I slid immobile like limp, wet jelly to the floor.  I had no ability to control my muscles, no ability to lift my arms or legs, and was in an altered state of consciousness. Floppy, but frozen in a fallen form on the floor, unable to move. I heard people talking, but I couldn't speak back. I heard their voices, but didn't understand what they were saying. It sounded like voices were coming through a tunnel, echoing from far away. 

They locked me in the director's office. Two of the other staff were in there. The director was going in and out. I was extremely dizzy, crying, having a severe migraine, in severe pain, and in severe emotional distress. I remember saying that I couldn't control my body, which was pinching the nerves in my neck and causing severe pain, and I said I wanted to die. 

I remember saying that my parents were trying to kill me. I had glimpses of knowing and remembering that the father figure had been trying to take my life since age 5, and my mom had done nothing to stop him. So in my mind, in my state of pain, she was culpable too. And in my state of not being able to articulate well, in spilling my guts, I told anyone in the room who was listening. 

I didn't know what kind of diagnosis I had back then at 19. I had never been to a doctor. I assumed I was ill because my "father" had been poisoning me with toxic gasses my whole life. I remember smelling toxic gas smells all the time as a kid and teen, and I told my coworkers that as well. 

My eyes were flickering but wouldn't open, and I kept falling on the floor. Then passed out. 

I was 19 the first time this happened at work. 

They gave me a form for child abuse, since they said I had applied when I was 18. 

They tried to get me to fill it out and sign it before I left.

But I was so dizzy and didn't know what had just happened. 

They didn't think I was well enough to drive home, but I had rested, and I was determined to drive home, and I did.

I pulled the paper out of my bag and gave it to my mom after dinner that night. I was confused. I didn't know what it was or where it came from. I thought it was work related, like a W-2 or something. 

She gave it to the father figure. 

They questioned me. They weren't happy.

I didn't understand the correlation of the events that conspired next, but my pet rabbit disappeared. I heard squealing above the garage one night when I was in bed, and my brother said, "He's killing your rabbit. You'd better go get it." 

I instantly put it out of my head because it was too dangerous. 

He couldn't be. 

If he was doing that to my bunny, what would he do to me. 

My brain refused to let it register that my brother said that.

I went to bed.

A week later, my mother told me that the neighbor dog had caught my bunny and killed it, and that it was dead on the side of the road, and did I want to go with her to see if it was him.

I said yes, and I walked with her. 

I saw it was Thumper, but I knew someone had just cleanly sliced off his head and left the body. 

I felt tears sprout on my face, but I had never cried from emotion in front of my mom before. I quickly turned away from her and walked away, back home, and up the hill towards his empty cage, but I wouldn't look at it. 

Instead I looked towards the neighbor's house and calmed my face until I felt normal. 

My bunny was my dearest and only friend at that time. 

But it was too dangerous to grieve.

To feel was to let myself get too close to the truth, which was understanding that my life was just as expendable as my bunny's. 

I wasn't ready to grieve my bunny's death or my own.

But I told my coworkers, because they were safe. 

And now I feel safe enough to remember that I told them.

Not just once. But often. 

Each time happened like the first time they locked me in the director's office. It was when I was in incredible physical pain, doing myoclonic jerks and was in an altered psychological state. Meaning, I couldn't control what I was saying, and I was in severe psychological pain as well. 

I felt like it was a nightmare, like I was in an altered state of consciousness. 

The second time, they helped me down to the basement into the break room, and showed me how to tuck a chair under the door of the break room door handle, since there was no lock on the break room door. When I came to, I had been rolling around on the floor and saw a chair tucked under the door and wondered who had done that, and thought I had dreamed it. I also saw two candy bar wrappers on the floor, and wondered who had littered. 

During the next staff meeting, the director lectured the staff on the break room snack box being two snacks worth short. The snack box was on an honor's system pay policy. I had an immediate flash of guilt but didn't know why, but one of the other teacher's volunteered to cover it. 

Then months and years later, I kept having nightmares that it was me who did it.  But I brushed it off as just that, nightmares. 

Then the director decided to move me from the toddler side of the daycare to the preschool side, since I decided to go to college for elementary education and started working at the preschool part-time while I took college classes. The director asked me to write up a little introductory bio about myself and maybe draw a few things, since she knew I liked to draw, and she said she would photo copy it and pass it out to the parents of the preschool children. 

So I waited until one night at home when everyone had gone to bed and I felt safe. I was feeling creative, drew a few things, made a crossword puzzle with nifty factoids about myself, and then suddenly... I remembered. 

I remembered that my parents were trying to murder me. Should I put that in there too?

Why not?

I figured that this might be my only chance to get someone to actually help me. This was a community of people with small children, and they were good people. Surely it couldn't hurt, right?

So I did. 

The director thought it was a fine idea. I thought for sure she would think it at least a bit odd. But she thought some of the jokes I put in were light hearted, creative and funny, so at least that tipped the scale in at least the whole thing not being completely dark and macabre. 

So it was distributed, and life went on.

But there was a glitch in the matrix. 

In the form of a girl named Krista. 

She was working at a preschool with my sister Louisa, and was in the process of possibly transitioning to the daycare where I worked. So she was sitting in for a week where I worked. 

And someone gave her a copy of bio meant for the parents. 

She immediately told me she loved my "little" drawings and wished she was talented. And then she said in a deeply concerned voice that Louisa had never mentioned the problem about my parents? 

At which point, my face fell.

At which point, her face instantly fell as well, as she was a highly sensitive individual. She read and responded to facial expressions carefully. 

"Oh, I'm so sorry. Was I not supposed to say anything?" she asked me. 

I was turning all shades of red, and was visibly crumbling on the spot. I told her I wished she hadn't said anything, but really couldn't say anything more. Krista was so uncomfortable, but I didn't know what to say to make her any less so.

"It's ok," I told her. Although it was not ok. 

I just didn't want her to be on the hook for anything. It wasn't her fault. 

I had no idea that she would be a bridge between my safe little world at the daycare, and the unsafe world at home. 

But I put it out of my mind instantly, because that's what I did with unsafe things. 

It was the safest thing to when your life is in constant danger. 

But several days later, someone said to me, "Your parents are coming here." 

And that's when my brain went berserk. 

I had the beginnings of a headache already brewing. But when I heard that was happening, it just got worse. I kept saying that somebody had to stop them. 

The director said she wouldn't let them come past the front desk. But I was distraught. She didn't know them like I knew them. He had weapons. He could gun the whole place down. 

I remember I became hysterical. I was crying. I think I had seizures. I remember muttering to myself. I remember them telling me to go in one of the pre-k rooms to be safe, and me stacking a wall of blue cots on top of themselves, 15 cots high against the door of the room I barricaded myself in, just in case. 

I remember being terrified, and peeking through the blinds of a window that looked out onto the parking lot of the daycare. I remember seeing my mom and him getting out of their brown station wagon, and walking up the daycare steps, into the building. 

Afterwards, I remember the director telling me that my mom was looking for me. That she said she wouldn't let them go past the front desk. That she wouldn't tell them where I was. 

But I immediately forgot this happened as soon as it happened. That's how I stayed safe. 

When I moved from the toddler room to the school age room in my early 20's, I remember telling each of the parents my name, did they get my bio and into sheet, and would they like to testify for me in court when I go to court whenever that might be. I never did go to court, but I asked anyway.

I remember being in a state of detachment, as if it wasn't me talking, but someone else, when I did this. At the end of each day, when I fell asleep at night, I remember thinking it felt quite nightmarish, because who would say something like that, especially an extremely shy person like me?

I immediately forgot all of these incidents as soon as they happened. That's how I stayed safe. 

The only way to stay safe when in continual threat of death was to convince yourself that there simply is no threat at all. To just be "out to lunch," in a way. Because of my brain injury at age 5, my brain wasn't working normally and I was pretty much always "out to lunch." It was very easy for me as a child, and since it was a habit I formed because my brain just wasn't working then, the habit continued into adulthood because habits just continue, even though my brain had started healing and was able to remember more than it did as a child. 

As an adult, any time I happened to "remember" something terrifying, my brain out of habit did as it always did... it converted reality into a nightmare. And I believed it was a nightmare. 

And I went on with my life, simply thinking I had a lot of crazy, horrible nightmares that felt similar to life but surely were nightmares.

Until I felt safe enough in my waking life for 5 years in a row now. Safe enough for the first time in my life with my partner and his family. 

Safe enough to realize what real family feels like.  What love feels like. What safety feels like. 

Safe. 

That's why I could finally realize that those "nightmares" weren't nightmares... they were reality. 

And now I finally remember that "That Horrible Thing You Did" was me simply telling my coworkers at the daycare that I thought my parents were killing me. 

It is true that I don't think my mom was trying to kill me. 

But in my pain and desperation at the time, and in my inability to articulate with precision, I tied her in with the FF, the father figure, and lumped them in as one unit.

I also had a suspicion that they were poisoning me at home, because I smelled fumes often at home, and I did not smell them at work. I did not have migraines or seizures at work, except for 3, and those started at home and carried over into work. I constantly had migraines, seizures and black outs at home. I woke up with the worse migraines on Saturday morning on a regular basis, and smelled bad chemical smells in the air when I woke up. I had the deepest intuition that the FF, the father figure was the cause of my pain, but I didn't know the exact reason. I also blamed my mom for not stopping him from whatever he was still doing. 

In my pain and inability to articulate clearly, I lumped them together as one unit, and called him "them." 

I know my mom did not cause the FF to try to kill me when I was 5. 

She never attempted to harm me. 

She has only been a source of steady calm, nurturing and peace. 

At least, that was my view of her when I had to stay in a constant state of protective amnesia through my childhood in order to have at least one good parent in my life. 

I made it up, though. In many ways, I made up a more angelic image of her, so I could survive emotionally in that nightmare house. 

But I understand it's complicated. She got caught in his web. She's an empath who went in naively, trying to help, being compassionate. I understand. I've been there. I myself as an adult have been caught in narcissistic, sociopathic webs before, but I've gotten out. I've run. But only because I've had my mother as an example of what NOT to do. I've become a runner, a constant detangler from webs, because of her. She doesn't know how to run because her mother never taught her. 

I've been wanting to tell my mom for over a year that I've finally remembered after a life time of amnesia  that it was the father figure has been trying to kill me ever since he beat me and left me for dead when I was 5.  That I've been terrified he was going to try to take my life every day since then. 

But I've just realized that the empty puzzle piece that used to mystify me, which I now understand, means that my mom already knows??!

That she's known for the last 10 years??!

That she's known longer than 10 years??

That she's known ever since I did "That Horrible Thing" at the daycare and she's never forgotten??!

That even though I blocked out what I did out of fear, she apparently never did. 

She just wouldn't spell it out because she is proper and respectable. I couldn't spell it out simply because my brain had deleted it. 

She knows.

She's known for a long time.  

This shatters my world in such a crazy way. I have been hesitant and afraid to tell her because I thought she would get angry and cut me off. Since she's cut me off before. 

But if she already knows, then she won't cut me off, right?

She wouldn't cut me off for telling her something she already knows, and has known for a long time, right? 

And what I'm going to tell her is actually an improvement on what she already knows, so she has even less of a motivation to cut me off right? 

Because there's nothing like saying, "Oh hey mom, remember that time I said at the daycare I thought you and the father figure were trying to kill me? Well, I actually meant to say that I only thought he was trying to kill me, not you. I think you are amazing." 

I feel muddled inside when I think of her still loyally supporting the person who purposefully tried to end my life, and still would if given a chance, in my opinion. 

He could easily turn her against me if I try to reach out to her and hold out an olive branch of truth. 

She could cut me off again.

Just like she did 10 years ago when I told her something a little less than stellar about her mate. When I told her that her husband, my "father," was actually a pedofile and had crossed a line with me when I was five. Her enraged response was, ironically, that little puzzle piece that she whips out to from time to time, to try to set me in my place: 

"Well, remember that Horrible Thing You Did at the Daycare."

Back then, I had no idea what she was talking about. 

She did. But she wouldn't tell me. And I still can't figure out her logic in bringing this up as a response. 

Regardless, there is a chance that my mom might cut me off again. 

But honestly, guys, it actually felt so freeing and authentic when she first cut me off ten years ago when I stood up for myself. It felt so honest. I liked being on social media where she had blocked me, and where I could write whatever I wanted, and she didn't write little hearts in "support" on my posts. A few years ago, I wrote to her because she had covid, and she had to go to the hospital. I was worried about her and sent her a nice message. She unblocked me, and now she posts things on my social media these days that I know she wouldn't if I told her the truth. I hate not being honest. 

I desire authenticity so badly. I am ready for authenticity, and the way is clearing in front of me. 

Which is why I'm so glad that my mom already knows what I want to tell her.

I've been trying to build up my bravery over the last year in order to tell her. But she already knows. That is such a relief!

I don't have to build up my bravery any more.  

Because, you know what? I already am brave. The fact that I remembered something this gory after repressing it in order to feel safe for this amount of time means that I must be brave. 

If I were to ever share anything with my mom, I would say. "I wasn't trying to hurt you, Mom. It was my only way of crying out for help. It was my way of trying to survive, trying to live." 

Everyone wants to live. 

If I could write a letter to my younger self, this is what I would say:

                 ************************************************************************

Dear 19 year old Self,

You don't know it, but you just did something incredibly brave. So brave that you had to blank it out. So brave that if you were to read this letter right now, your mind wouldn't let you understand it, and that is why you will never get or read this letter. But to humor both of ourselves, I'm writing it to you anyway. 

You don't know it, but you are the bravest person I know. I cry for you almost every day. You are locked in a prison in your mind, and you don't have the key to get out. You have dissociative amnesia, and you live with someone who wants to take your life. Any time you get an intuition you are in the slightest danger, you don't go into fight or flight. You go into "that isn't happening to me." It is safest that way. You put it into a file in your brain that says "dangerous: do not process." But you don't even know you are doing it.

You don't know it, but your mom is going to call what you did at the daycare "That Horrible Thing You Did." And you won't know what she is talking about. And you will be too terrified to even think about asking. You will automatically, without even knowing it, put her remark into the "dangerous: do not process" file of your brain and just carry on with your life. 

Just know that I have your back. There are actually lots of people that you have told, and lots of "horrible" things therefore you have done, according to her. 

But guess what? It's time to flip the script. It's time to rewrite the story how it actually happened. You are not horrible. You are brave, amazing and wonderful and strong. Most people would want to keep repressing, and would never have allowed themselves to remember. Someday you will finally feel safe enough to remember it all. And you are going to heal from it. 

I promise. 

Love,

Your Current Self

                  ************************************************************************

Maybe someday I'll get an opportunity to talk more with my mom about what actually happened. And maybe she will want to understand. But I understand if she doesn't want to or can't. In the meantime, I will be proud of myself and love myself for both of us. 

Photo: a creek called Bubbling Mike here in the PNW where we went camping. 

Top photo: the view through a bamboo blind on our porch here in the PNW.