A Body Never Forgets

It started when I was around nine years old. Every night, several times a night, the same nightmare would cloud my thoughts. I dressed in my purple Dora the Explorer pajamas, crawled into the bottom bunk, and snuggled with my purple sheets and my fuzzy caterpillar stuffed animal, Mr. Gumdrops. I lay in bed staring at the wooden slats that hung above my head and closed my eyes. I winced, and I knew it started. I knew because it always started in the same place—my friend Maddison’s bedroom. It was a small room like a music box, but instead of a ballerina dancing in the middle, there was a large bed with a metal frame. Above it hung a plastic chandelier with little diamonds and Eiffel tower cut-outs. I remember the Paris-themed curtains and the light pink walls that reminded me of Barbie. I remember the musky smell of my friend’s sweaty feet and the cat hair that floated in the air every time I breathed. As I remembered all of the items in that room, my perspective changed: I was lying down on my back and saw through the eyes of someone else. A girl with my bracelet lying on Maddison’s bed pinned down by a shadowy figure. The figure was black with hollowed-out eyes and horns grew from its scalp. The figure’s hands pinned the girl down in the nightmare, but my wrists felt like they snapped under the pressure, and her legs were spread apart—I felt like mine were, too. Its tongue grazed her neck and how she thrashed her arms and legs to escape the shadowy figure felt like mine as well. I pinched my eyes tighter, hoping it would stop because the girl couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t do anything. Beyond the shadowy figure that straddled the girl, I saw Maddison from behind the door. I saw her eyes widen as she listened to the girl that screamed endlessly for someone to help. Help me!

My legs shook and eyes watered like I wrestled with blankets made from chain mail. As I felt the shadow’s teeth nibble on my ear, my chest grew tight like a weight was held to it, and my body couldn’t move. It didn’t matter how much I tried to thrash or break free—my eyes remained wide open as I heard the soft moans of the figure. This continued sometimes for hours at night until my body decided to wake me up. I woke up with tears that poured down my face while I screamed into the air, and my body shook like I had emerged from a pool on a cold afternoon. My mother burst through the doorway and ran to my aid. I cried as she patted me on the back while on the top bunk my sister rolled over to get back to sleep. The only way my mother calmed me was in the rocking chair. She rocked me back to sleep, as she sobbed a silent prayer for me. Other times, I woke up, ran to my closet, screamed, cried, and threw my legs against the door so I knew that they worked. 

I stayed up night after night hoping to not close my eyes. I played with my stuffed animals and had a night light turned on when it was time for bed. I remember my mom had to rock me to sleep while singing a prayer over me before I lay down for the night. My heart beat fast, my palms sweated; as soon as I climbed into bed, I pulled the covers over myself like a protective barrier. It didn’t matter. My eyes were wide open and my arms and legs were crushed as my body jerked while slime pooled down my neck from the figure’s spit. It didn’t matter if I slept in my closet with the door locked or under my bed or in my sister’s bed, because it always found me. The purple night light that highlighted the walls wasn’t bright enough, and the protective layer over me was cheap twine. 

Before the nightmares started, I had two friends I’d known since I was eight years old—Maddison and Mia. Maddison was around eight years old like me, and Mia was twelve. I used to hang out with Maddison and Mia every day at Maddison’s house. We played in the garden, braided each other’s hair, and played house—Maddison was the daughter, while Mia and I were her father and mother. I loved hanging out with them, but when I was around ten, Maddison wanted to do more big kid things, and every time Mia hugged me, I shook like a fly glued to a spider’s web. I didn’t know why I shook, but at the time it didn’t matter, because Mia moved to Texas soon after that, and Maddison was in her own world. 

When I reached middle school, the nightmare clung to my thoughts. I dressed in my t-shirt and sweatpants and crawled into bed like always. I tucked my sheets around me, closed my eyes and tried to sleep—I clenched them as tight as I could with the purple night light that hung over me instead of my sister’s bed like before. I started to remember more as the nightmare progressed, and with each detail the figure became less and less shadowy. Suddenly my eyes popped open and the figure gazed into my eyes with its light blue ones. I jolted awake. Sweat painted my back and my eyes watered. Why?!? I remembered those piercing blue eyes that gazed upon me with such care—they were my friend Mia’s eyes. But could it be Mia? Perhaps there was someone else with blue eyes like that. There had to be. She couldn’t possibly be the one because that just wasn’t who she was—she was like a sister to me. 

I ignored my thoughts. Instead I thought about all the fun things I could do outside with my new friends in the neighborhood. I was in middle school at the time and hung out with my guy friends, Lucas, Tyler, Ryan, and Jevion. I didn’t feel that weight on my chest when I was around them because all I felt was the dirt smeared on my face from mud fights and cool water from water balloon fights in the scorching summertime. We played flag football in the street with dirty rags tucked into our shorts, and our breath smelled like barbecue ribs that we had at Ryan’s house. These were the things I tried to remember when I lay in bed at night, but the nightmare didn’t care—it came anyway.

Another sleepless night after the next and it became worse. One Monday morning sophomore year of high school my friend Vanessa hugged me with a tight embrace—and the chain mail that I felt before draped over my whole body. Whenever she had hugged me previously, I didn’t feel the chain mail. Why do I feel it now? I couldn’t answer my own question, because I didn’t know why. For the sake of our friendship, I tried to keep still, but my whole body shook as if spiders wriggled up my spine.

“Are you okay?” She looked at me with her green eyes.

“Yeah. I’m just a little cold. Anyway, could you let go? I have to get to class.” 

When she released me, I dashed around the corner to catch my breath. I knew that she wasn’t someone who would hurt me, but I couldn’t tell her about the shaking—she would just worry about it until she wound up in a room with four padded walls. I rolled into bed that night and stared at my ceiling. I shook profusely and sweated through my sheets—the figure was no longer a figure. I remembered her dirty blonde hair draped over my face as I begged her to stop and how her breath smelled like the lasagna we had for lunch that day. I remembered her hands gripped my thighs and her raspy voice claimed my eardrums. Why did she do it? Why me? I woke up of my own will that night and the pain seized my chest ten times as hard and heavier than before. I still can’t believe it was Mia.

After I realized my sad truth, I spoke to my mom about seeing a child therapist. Mom tried to ask me questions but I shrugged it off in front of her like it didn’t mean anything.

I attended therapy for three years. Heather was a fairly plump little lady with brown hair and blonde highlights who always smelled like fresh picked flowers. There were two rooms that we used—her office and the sand room. Her office was an explosion of color with light blue on the wall and a dark turquoise couch with soft green and purple pillows shaped like flowers. She always sat in her fancy yellow wing chair with children’s toys that littered the room. With four bland, white-painted walls, the sand room had a table in the middle of it filled with sand. Little figurines and toys encircled the table on shelves in layers of four—I used the figurines to set up the scene of my nightmare and the image of the safe place I escaped to whenever I dreamt about it again. I worked hard for three years, and Heather used a therapy that involved a device consisting of two joystick-looking things that vibrated in my hands as I told her the events that occurred on that day. I still had these dreams, but I remembered that I had a safe place to go to when they occurred. I was doing well. 

I passed my sessions and was able to carry on with different techniques to soothe myself. It was not until one evening when I snuggled with my mom and my sister that I realized my trauma would be a part of me now and in the future. We huddled together on the couch in our fuzzy pajamas that we got for Christmas the year before. Mama sat on the far end of the couch with me leaning against her and my sister leaning on me. We were all trying to play my Mom’s word game with her—Wordscapes. It was fun, and we laughed about all of the made up words that we could come up with, but then my sister’s hand grazed my thigh. Shivers ran down my spine—the chain mail slipped around my neck and aligned itself with me like it did before. My eyes began to water, and I felt like running to my closet and locking the door behind me. I wanted to scream. Why can’t I forget already?!

I love my sister, but all I felt were Mia’s hands on my thighs, the hands that made me shake so much. My chest clamped together like a spring. Hyperventilating, I leaned forward and slowly pushed myself off the couch for a glass of water.

“Honey, are you okay?” My mom leaned forward on her cushion.

I wobbled over to the counter and grabbed a cup from the cabinet and filled it with tap water from the sink. 

Later that night the nightmare came back, and my body began to shake again. I woke myself up and threw my pillows off the bed at the wall and chucked all of my papers from my dresser onto the floor. Then I dropped to my knees, clawed my fingers through my hair, and bawled. The next day I called Heather. 

Heather has helped me a lot with my nightmares, and even though I am used to fighting them off, it isn’t any easier. I wish that I could say that I forgot, or that it doesn’t bother me anymore, but I still feel these sensations. I tried to ignore it, but my body shakes. It shakes like a guinea pig face-to-face with a bloodhound.

Things are a little different as a twenty-year-old now than an eight-year-old who couldn’t do anything about what was happening to her. I know who did it, and I know where it happened, and I know roughly around how old I was. The experience is a part of me that will always make me shake or quiver when a woman touches me, but I can go to my safe place. A place with a bench, a swingset, my dog Jenna, and snow that isn’t cold, or at least that is what I imagine to escape. The nightmare rarely happens now, but when it does, it is just as frightening as the first time—last week being the most recent occurrence. I woke up in a cold sweat with irritated eyes and the weight of the chain mail nestled in my lungs. Breathing heavily, I sat up slowly, examining the room I was in, and laid my hands in my lap, repeating everything in the dream, talking myself through it. Realizing that I wasn’t there anymore, I calmed down, but my body still shook. I knew that I wasn’t there anymore and my brain understood that, but my body was still stuck in the past despite my mind’s realization.