I have a recurring nightmare that I’ve killed someone.
I’ll describe it in a minute, but first, here is where it came from.
Throughout my childhood, the abuse came without warning.
It felt like a cinder block hung ten feet above my head at all times. What made my step dad happy the day before, would cause the cinder block to crash down onto my skull today. It was inconsistent, unpredictable, and illogical.
For example:
In trying to elicit praise, I said, in my most chipper voice:
“Hey dad, today I learned how to do cursive in school, look!”
I write my name in cursive.
In trying to show my love and elicit his in return, I write his last name as mine.
“Wrong. That’s called writing.”
My heart drops and I’m confused.
“Yeah, I wrote my name in cursive.”
“No, that’s writing.”
“What?”
“What did I just say?! Listen up, boy.”
Now I feel like I’m walking a tightrope ten stories in the air because I have no idea how angry he’s about to get. He might just be gruff or he might spiral into a rage where he yells, grabs me by the arm, makes up insane homework assignment to make me believe his point of view, grounds me for a month… Who fucking knows?
“But this is what they said in school…”
“Are you talking back to me?”
“No.”
“Look, this is writing” (he jerks my pencil out of my hand, writes in cursive and then in printing) “…and this is printing.”
I am so fucking confused.
I couldn’t have articulated it at the time, but I knew I was simply trying to share with him an accomplishment. Something anybody else in the world would return with affirmation. But he returned it with aggression and accusations as if I were trying to get away with something.
“But in school they said that is cursive.”
“What did I just get done telling you, boy?!”
Even when I give the credentials of learning it in school, from an actual teacher, a grown adult who has a degree specializing in this very thing, it makes no difference.
Even at that age I could guess that that was the terminology when he was in school, and it had simply evolved now that I’m in school.
But he wouldn’t even acknowledge that. He insisted that his were the only terms in existence.
On its own, I imagine this event not sounding significant. But it was not on its own. It was one of several painful interactions that day. One of many that week. One of several hundred that year.
It hits the same tender wound that has never had a second to heal. And it’s roots under the surface are tangled with all the very significant, terrifying events.
The small event sends a wave through the entire root system — the entire emotional ecosystem, stirring the pain from the big events.
He was and adult and my father figure, so it never occurred to me that the problem was with him.
Without this as a possible explanation, the only answer that made sense was that there was something horribly wrong with me, that I couldn’t see.
As a result, since I was a kid, I’ve been followed by a vague feeling of persistent guilt of some horrible crime, resulting in this recurring nightmare.
I’ve killed someone.
I don’t remember actually having done it, but I had. And I’ve hidden the body poorly.
Sometimes I broke through the basement concrete and buried the body. Or I buried it in the backyard, but not very deep, and close to my home.
I imagine the friends and family of the murdered start wondering where they are. They call the police. They put up posters and form search parties. Inevitably, someone will come forward, having seen me with the victim. The police question me. I lie and feel ashamed and dishonest. They sense my lying and they start looking around my yard and find the body. It will be so easy for them to discover I’m the murderer.
I plead with myself: “Why did I do it?”and “I had such a nice life and now I’m fucked.”
I keep thinking in disbelief about what I had done, shocked that I was actually capable of killing someone.
I see the inconsolably crying and grief of the victim’s family and I know I caused it.
It makes me feel vulnerable, sad, sick, afraid, and ashamed. All of the good feelings I’ll have for the rest of my life will be pulled into the black hole I’m feeling in my soul.
My life is over and now my choices are:
- Go through the rest of my life with the shame and guilt of knowing I’ve killed someone.
- Every day wonder if the police will knock on my door.
- Turn myself in and spend the rest of my life in prison.
Every day of my adult life, when I interact with other people, or imagine interacting with them, there is at least one moment where I have to deal with this feeling. That there’s something intrinsically criminal about me to other people that I am unaware of.
I get better at managing it every year, and the dreams stopped once I connected it to my step dad… Unless I talk about it, then I usually have the dream that night.
Tomorrow I’ll let you know what happened.