“My bathroom had now become the bathroom in the old motel room in ’68. My mind’s eye flew open. The window of the memory had started with that body memory. I didn’t realize what my hand was telling me until I was instantly back in the motel room. Plain as day, I was there, again. I could see all of us there. Dad, Craig, me, but the woman had already been murdered and was missing. The room was full of chaos, and they were moving about quickly, but not orderly. Dad handed me his knife. It was heavy – that was the heaviness that was in my hand. The odd thing about working through tragic memories is the way they come back makes sense when you educate yourself. The body keeps score and the heaviness in my hand led me back.
With the knife in my hand (which makes no difference anymore, except to explain the weight in my hand), Dad told me to follow him into the bathroom. I didn’t want to go because they had placed that lady in there. I opened my eyes or were they shut? I wanted to pull myself out of that bathroom and to stop watching in my mind’s theater. But now, I was urged back, so I continued. Craig was in the bathroom and the lady was in the bathtub.
The water was running over her neck, and they had her head laid back, sort of cocked in a weird position. It was laid back so far it was like a fish head that had not been cut off all the way and flopped back. Her head just should not in that position.
“It shouldn’t look like that,” I literally said out loud.
My mind raced as I was watching it again. I started crying rather loudly and intently. The scene played out with the water running over and over her neck. It ran until the blood seemed to be washed away.
. . .
I woke up a few hours later to a tremendous headache. My body ached everywhere, and my soul hurt. I went through the day and wasn’t sure how I was going to put this away so that it didn’t tear up my life for weeks or even days. I watched movies to try to escape into someone else’s story. I went for a nice walk and bought Thai food. I came home and as the night hours would be coming on soon, I needed a plan.
What would my night look like? Would I see them washing out her neck over and over as I tried to go to sleep? Would I go to sleep and wake up with another nightmare of something else that I hadn’t remembered and be terrified all over again? I couldn’t know for sure what was going to happen, but I was getting better at trying.
. . .
A few hours before I got into bed, I got a severe bout of diarrhea. This carried on for about the first hour I was in bed. My body was tremendously trepidatious going into the dark hours of night. As I lay there crying out to God, He answered me. I watched as Jesus walked into that motel room and picked me up. He put me in his arms and held me tight. He walked over to the bathroom door, and He closed it. I heard Him tell me that I didn’t have to go in there anymore. I didn’t have to continue to watch. He’d stopped it for me. Now, I was equipped with an answer. Every time my mind wanted to go back and replay that scene (which would be a vicious cycle), I’d only go back to the door and see it closed and my mind could stop.”
From A Prisoner by No Crime of My Own. Incest. Rape. Murder. Then, I turned Four. The journey of healing.
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