A couple of years ago I had a dream in which I found myself lying on a surface that could have been a table of some kind, with people who I presumed to be doctors or surgeons standing around me. They were discussing me, talking about how they would carve up my genitals and 'fix me'. I was just lying there for what felt like an eternity, listening in horror to what was being said.
Eventually I managed to get myself together and scrambled off the tablet to flee. I found myself running through corridors, knowing all too well that they would still catch me in the end. That there was nothing that I could do to save myself.
The memories which I now seem to have regained of the childhood abuse which I would have suffered when I was about five or six years old seem to mirror this dream in a way that's almost frightening. Maybe I did begin to remember some of those old memories, just seeping through into my dreams as my mind sought some way to give shape to my terrors I was experiencing at the hands of doctors and kin.
Doctors seeking to alter my body without my permission, or adults seeking to use my body without my permission. Me resisting. Fleeing, yet knowing that I cannot escape. In both dream and memories a child.
Did I ever really escape as a child? Did I truly leave that darkened room after the man forcefully closed the door? Or did that child remain there, in the darkness, with the sound of the man's voice and the slamming of the door forever echoing in their mind?
I can still feel those hands grasping and clawing at me. I still don't like people touching me, even if it is with my explicit permission. There's always this lingering sense of terror that those hands will hurt me again. That any adult is to be distrusted as they may seek to harm me. I don't like adults. I'm glad I'm not one. I don't want anything to do with adults. They frighten me.
Yet a child cannot accomplish anything in this world without support from adults. Or by becoming an adult themselves. I'm not sure I'm ready for such a thing. I'm still that terrified child, curled up in terror and sadness in that dark room. I am not sure that I can ever find the courage to face the world outside it ever again. Not after what happened. Not after what keeps happening over and over again to reinforce those notions about adults.
There's no adult body waiting for me outside that room. There's no home waiting for me, either. No hope. No happiness. Just more suffering.
It truly doesn't matter what I do. Nothing will ever change.
Maya
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