It was a version of the same nightmare I've had since the fourth grade yet it was brutal in its own way. I can barely function here at home by myself and I'm by myself at least half the time. I sit very still so that no one will know that I'm home. I don't even wait for an actual knock on the door before I fret these days. In the idiom of Pearl Jam's "Rearviewmirror," the shades are never raised. Neither parent made an appearance in this dream which might be the worst part. They sent a representative whom I met outside my front door. She had a terrible Asian accent that my damaged brain simply will not comprehend very well and she listed a series of demands from them that were horribly impractical for someone in my state.
The threat attached to the demands was the same it has always been in my nightmares about the parents with an extra twist. When I informed this representative that I would not answer the door and would call the cops at the first sign of either parent, she presented me with a document. It was simply an official demand that they leave me the hell alone. The threat of it being "in writing" was the same threat that I try to deal with by writing about this trauma here so often. I would be exposed as someone too easily hurt because everyone knows what wonderful people they are. In short, I'd be wearing a "Scarlet TS" for Terrible Son. I've been dealing with those consequences for the better part of a decade. I got rid of the poisonous relationships that left me wanting to die and, in the process, they took the rest of the family with them.
No matter what the settings may be, the dreams are always the same. I get to face their disapproval and condemnation with the added feeling that they never asked for much where a healthy person is concerned. Therefore, all the mostly healthy members of my family and their adult friends "know" that I could just try harder. After all, the current situation is unacceptable and unreasonable and I couldn't agree more. There's also no one damned thing that I can do about it. I live each day amid a collection of rocks and hard places while making the best of it.
The good news is that I don't have to beat down fantasies of killing myself anymore. As I suspected and, more than anything, hoped, removing myself from a bad situation was the closest I could find to a cure. As miserable as I feel mentally and physically, it's just a shadow of what they did to me on a regular basis. I will hurt, probably yell out in agony, sit absolutely still so that my grey kitty won't choose to abandon me. Instead, this little 10-12 pound cat will try to beat her dinner out of me. I'm only 41 and I'm frail enough to feel it.
Maybe that cup of coffee will help.
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