I've always had very vivid dreams and unusually vivid dream recall. I also have recurrent dreams that I can remember from childhood. Most of them lull me into a false sense of security before springing something horrific on me. I have trained myself to wake up when I feel I am in danger. Too bad that theory doesn't apply in real life.
I was too young to realize what was happening to me, so of course, I thought I was dreaming. At first, I would just feel uncomfortable, then I would burn with pain, but never enough for it to wake me. It almost felt like I really needed to pee until the sensations crossed a threshold into a discomfort that I forced myself to endure. One night, the burning pain was so intense I sat bolt upright in my bed. Still groggy with sleep, I watched a shadowy figure slip from my bedroom into the hall. By the height and build, there was only one person it could be. I had absolutely no idea what my dad had been up to, all I knew was that it hurt. It wasn't until I was in my early twenties that I finally understood what he had been doing.
The realization didn't come to me right away, you understand. It took me awhile to put two and two together. I'm just grateful that it didn't hit me while I was being intimate with my fiance. The experience had been so different that I didn't make the connection until I suddenly realized, much to my horror, what had been going on. The bottom dropped out of my stomach. My head began to swim. A revulsion I never knew could exist exploded throughout my entire body. Bile surged up my throat. A bewildering mixture of emotions collided within me until I was forced to accept what I refused to believe...my Dad had touched me...he had done things to me in my sleep...things 'down there'.
The images that came to mind repulsed me. So much betrayal...so much shame...so much rage. I wanted to tear him limb from limb, rip his junk off, beat the living shit out of him. I was his child...his child...and he... I couldn't wrap my head around it. I wanted to peel my own skin off to remove his touch from my body, but I knew it wouldn't do any good. Those sensations would still be in my mind. I wanted them gone, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do to make them go away. Unidentified triggers still set me off, inducing fight or flight, paralyzing fear, or intense grief.
Some nights when my mom was out bowling with her league, my dad would put the stereo on and ask me to dance with him. I never wanted to. He always held me too close; it felt creepy and weird. He danced so close to me that his pelvis rubbed against mine. The little voice inside my head that had been nagging me about the way he was dancing with me began screaming like a siren. I pushed him away in disgust, hurried down the hall to my bedroom and 'locked' the door. The lock I had was a joke; it was a thin little piece of metal that flipped closed in front of the door. It could be easily unlatched by slipping an envelope through the crack and jostling it upwards. To make matters worse, my lock had been severely damaged; bent backwards from one of the many times my dad had kicked the door in.
The knob began to turn. The door gave quite a bit, but held. Dad demanded that I open it, but I refused. He could have easily kicked it in or flipped the lock as he had done so many times before, but for some reason, he didn't. He pounded on my door for quite some time, yelling and cussing up a blue streak. To my utter amazement, he eventually stopped and went back out into the living room. Even after he cranked the stereo up as loud as it would go, I could still hear him yelling and cussing me out. I huddled in my room, trembling in fear, waiting for him to pass out or fall asleep. I was hoping that Mom would hurry up and get home. I didn't trust the man, and I didn't want to be left alone with him anymore. He frightened me in ways that terrified me. Now that I'm a grown woman, I finally understand why...and I will be thoroughly revolted by it until the day that I die.
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