There are gaping voids of missing time within my mind. I didn’t realize how much history I had lost until I started seeing a therapist. How does a person live for 40+ years playing the same old recorded videos in your head without questioning where the rest of the footage is?
One morning while driving to work, I was exercising my brain by trying to remember good memories with my mother. I knew she had been verbally abusive but chalked it up to sheer ignorance of how to be a good parent. After all, that was still during the era of Dad coming home to dole out whippings with the belt if Mom told him I’d been naughty.
So there I was digging in my mental file cabinets when I happened upon a memory labeled as “good”. I was probably about 5 years old and was heading down the basement stairs when I missed the second step and tumbled down the rest of the way to land heavily on the hard concrete floor. I burst into uncontrollable tears and my Mom rushes down the stairs to scoop me up in her arms. She carries me back upstairs and sat on the living room couch where she held me until I stopped crying.
Ok. I could see how that was labeled as “good”, but yet, something was off. I began to dissect the memory file since I still had an hour before I reached work.
Why was I going down to the basement? This was long before we had a cat so there was no litter box to clean. I don’t recall ever needing to fetch any items for upstairs. So why?
Then it was like a literal dam opened and released a flood of visions, accompanied by a huge rush of emotion. A giant wave of sadness filled with the stinging bite of fear.
There’s a door with light coming from underneath. I’m staring at that light because if my eyes wander anywhere else I’ll be overcome by the dread of the suffocating darkness that surrounds me. The light under the door is nearly at eye level because I’m sitting on the stairs. Sitting at the top, as close as I can to the light. A shadow approaches the door. The handle rattles, the door flings open and I blink at the shock of light that fills my eyes. Is it over? No. Mom angrily orders me to go to the bottom of the steps. Don’t sit at the top! That’s not your punishment! Once I reach the bottom she turns off the light and shuts the door. I stand still as the darkness envelopes me once again. I stare up at the light under the door. The only literal ray of hope my little heart clings to. It keeps me from imagining dreadful horrors within the black shadows. If I stare at the light they can’t will themselves into existence to get me.
Now I know why, even as an adult, I still run up the basement steps after I turn off the light.