memory with trauma

A friend of mine shared a viral tweet today that voiced “memory with trauma be like…I was born, then I was 13 for a minute, and then I turned 21.”

I commiserated, commenting that I too have very few concrete childhood memories prior to age 10 – even in looking at photographs, I feel very little connection – like a faint shadow of a memory, but nothing definitively clear; you could alter my childhood photo album and I am honestly not sure I’d be able to differentiate between the real photographs and the fabricated ones. I remember being in certain places… but in an odd, empty and lonely way. I don’t remember people, as they were, or interactions hardly at all. And if I had no physical evidence of my childhood, no photos, no video, no memorabilia to reference…I thought, what would be left, still standing, the things that live only in the etchings of my mind?…as our convo digressed, I light heartedly commented that while my memories are few – what I DO have vivid recollections of are various nightmares I had as a child, if that counts. As the actual heaviness of that statement sunk in though, I attempted to pull something else, anything else really; it took effort, searching my brain for bits and pieces, but it didn’t take much to recognize a pattern…(for the record, I had a pretty normal childhood – aside from the trauma – so I was not looking for/expecting anything other than just a completely random compilation of memories)

• leaving something outside by the barn – which sat in the corner of our lot, lined by a thick forest of trees on 2 sides – and having to (or wanting it badly enough to) run out, after dark to retrieve it…I was terrified, and alone
• ending up under water and disoriented in the babysitter’s pool – unable to get my feet under me or my head above water – finally catching hold of the edge and pulling myself up, crying, choking, and coughing from inhaling water…it was scary, and no one offered help or comfort
• my dad reaching back and slapping me in the car…I was panicky and he wanted me to shut up about it, and I couldn’t
• my mom being taken away by ambulance…intense fear, as I had no idea what was happening and no one there to really reassure me (a neighbor stayed with me, so I wasn’t alone, but she was practically a stranger to me)
• setting my teddy bear in the hallway outside my door, because it had a music box in it and the repetitive melody it played panicked me – you had to wind it up with the knob to play the music, but I was still irrationally panicked by the thought of it playing its song over and over through the night
• stealing a couple barbies from my babysitter’s house and having to return them…I felt so embarrassed and ashamed
• overwhelming shame and guilt – I don’t remember the context/cause – to the point I couldn’t sleep and was so physically sick to my stomach that I got up and sat in the bathroom vomiting multiple times
• cowering in the floorboards of the car, panicking during a fireworks show – alone, no one with me to reassure/comfort me
• multiple, severe car accidents we witnessed – my mom was a nurse so she’d pull over to offer assistance until the ambulance arrived…leaving me alone in the car looking on
• getting a sad face on my behavior chart in 1st grade and having to have a parent sign off on it…so much shame in such a little person
• getting scolded by the librarian for going up and down the stairs multiple times (in an attempt to find my mother)  – obviously already feeling panicky that I couldn’t find her, then added shame for being scolded
• making breakfast for myself, eating alone – climbing on the counter to reach the toaster & in winter, sitting on the floor next to the heat vent because, why not? no one was there to tell me to sit at the table

Lots of shame. Lots of guilt. Lack of comfort. Lack of anyone even present when I needed them.

(in contrast, I only came up with 2 neutral memories and no “happy” memories – eating dinner at my great grandmother’s house, and my dad driving the tractor for a hay ride at a fall festival…I don’t even remember christmases, birthdays, vacations…it’s all just, so, blank)

Brains are interesting things.

[post script: finally snagged a positive one – wrote a poem for an assignment in 4th grade/age 9, which sparked my love of poetry & writing]