The ever-present, overwhelming evil
From my journal, 1/21/2024:
“The nightmares had been quiet for some time, but started back up in December, and increased in frequency and intensity of disturbing emotions and emotional pain….I’d had nightmares for decades. Mostly memories of the abuse itself….But over the last few years two new versions started up, one worse than the other….SNAKES – copperheads and cobras. Always those – venomous, threatening.
The nightmare always started the same — it was always at night – always just one tiny snake lurking in the background. Sometimes it was a tiny one in a dark corner of my bedroom. Other times it was one tiny snake lurking in the back corner of my bureau drawer, tucked under and behind my sweaters.
And always, whenever I approached that drawer, I would tell myself, ‘Just be careful. Don’t draw its attention – if I’m careful, the snake won’t notice me, and it will leave me alone. I can get what I need and avoid it.’ In my dreams, I accepted this as normal reality. That was how it was there – I just needed to use cautious co-existence, and “maybe” it would all be okay? At least I thought that in the dream. But it really wasn’t so, because the snake was always there and I NEVER really felt safe.
Then the dream would progress the same way every time. Co-existence became impossible because the snake would swell, get very large… and then start multiplying…hundreds, then thousands of them. They were always there, filling that bureau drawer, getting more dangerous by the moment. I didn’t know where they might move to. Or when they might strike.
Finally, they overtook the whole drawer, spilling out of it and onto the floor. Very quickly they would cover the entire floor, then my whole room and finally cover my bed, and me, until they were all over me and I was overwhelmed. Each time, I had no escape, not one bit of space for me. Their mouths would open, fangs about to clamp down on me….and then I would wake up in a cold sweat…
But sometimes, the nightmare would take an even more ominous turn. Because in that variation, the snakes didn’t try to bite. Instead, they became one huge cobra, tangled around my body, and it was shooting its venom right at me. This liquid hit my eyes and face, and I couldn’t escape… and always, I was trapped, helpless, overrun. At their mercy.”
The origin?
There is a video my husband sent me, done by a group called The School of Life. This particular one was about answering a key question that could liberate you from your childhood pain. It related that much of our early childhood includes things we can’t remember. But we “feel” those things. And the key question was to ask yourself what you fear now, and how you act now. Because the origins of those things are often far back in time. We can’t reach them consciously, but we act them out all the time. Our “bodies and psyches” remember. Our current-day actions and fears originated somewhere.
These snake nightmares reoccurred MANY times over several years. And they were always the same – set in my childhood bedroom in the middle of the night. Always, drenched in evil and terror, and always ending with either the cobra spitting at me, or with thousands of snakes everywhere consuming me.
I have wondered if something happened to me at night in my room. My room had a door. Dad worked second shift every other week. And he would have gotten home after midnight, as his work commute took almost an hour. Sometimes I would wake up to see him standing in the kitchen only in his underwear, getting a snack or reading the paper. Did he go right to bed?
One time he joked about how he had a whole conversation with me late in the night. Said I must have been dreaming or “sleepwalking.”
I remember nothing about that. Only that I feared the dark. And my nightmares were always about those snakes….swelling in size, growing in number, attacking and then overwhelming me with either fangs or spewed venom….
If you can say “years of stored terror and helplessness trapped in a young body,” that describes these dreams. What memories were their origins rooted in?
On to THAT emotion
While I listed many emotions in the previous post that filled up my frozen emotional bag of confusion, I left off the biggest one – RAGE. All the other emotions combined didn’t come close to the amount of rage that started surfacing in me at this time. For sure, there was no confusion about rage or difficulty in identifying that one. Rage will take three posts to properly explore how it came up, and what it drives in me to this day.
In fact, before I get into the “historical” posts for my rage in 2018-2019, let me do a “status check” on where I am with rage right now. Then I will pick up with where it was in 2018-2019.
Note:
I am seeking financial support to complete my memoir, work with an editor, and make a visit to my home state for fact-checking. Your help would mean the world to me as I take this step toward healing and giving voice to my journey.
Please like, comment, and share this post to help spread the word. The link for my fundraiser is on GoFundMe. Thank you for your support.
Soul Mosaic 
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