Part 10: How I Uncovered the Truth about my Toddlerhood : My Life Falls Apart
For most of my life, I believed my childhood had been simple: a small cottage, my siblings, my parents, and the occasional visit from Nan. But the truth was far darker. A single moment would shatter everything I believed in and reveal a memory my mind had buried for almost fifty years.
The Moment My World Fell Apart
But I hadn't had a cosseted childhood at all. In fact, the opposite. I suffered intrusive thoughts and a secret fantasy world fuelled by a childhood familiar which I called Aidan. I explained my odd experiences to growing up in a chaotic household with a mentally ill father and depressive mother. Cramped living conditions and poverty created further challenges. I am ok with this and have come to terms with it.The Memory That Returned After 50 Years
However, a series of events would reveal that my lifelong passion for novel-writing was in fact fuelled by toddlerhood trauma of seeing my twin Eve's bloodied face after an accident with glass. We were both just 4. Nonetheless, I would soon learn that Eve’s accident merely formed a portal to earlier, more horrific traumas of when I was 3.My mother’s half-brother Uncle Dan had lived in our cottage for over a year in 1968. I was only 3 at the time and assumed he had nothing to do with me. However, after gleaning my novels, I discovered recurrent scenes of sex abuse and smothering all over the place. I hadn’t noticed because I was looking only for broken bottles and disfigured faces - things to do with Eve's accident. I also believed I was simply writing ‘dark fiction.’
On seeing Eve’s anesthetized form on her return from hospital, I had seen a man’s face rise in my chest. This bizarre experience is known as a somatic memory, which means a body part stores the memory rather than the brain alone. The man’s face had been Uncle Dan’s. I hadn’t realized at the time, not understanding what I was experiencing.
How My Writing Revealed the Trauma
One particular scene in my novel Nadia would finally trigger a horrific memory of what had happened to me when I was 3. The scenes were factual recounts dressed up as fiction and taken out of context. Adults replace the parts of children. The manner in which I described a woman wiping blood from her hands had triggered the memory. I had just read about a character almost choking to death after another character, based upon Uncle Dan, had entered the scene.I now have the terrible memory of being suffocated at the age of 3. I haven’t seen it for almost 50 years.
This next part is an abridged excerpt from my book Mirror Image Shattered which describes what actually happened. I had found it extremely difficult to write.
“My twin Eve and I had been playing in our bedroom. He climbed onto my bed. Being only 3, I had believed this adult was doing something routine. His dark face loomed against the ceiling.
He mounted my abdomen, legs astride. He grunted commands. I grew confused. He added force and eclipsed the window as his shadow drew across. Terror reared up on the realization something terrible was about to happen. I writhed and kicked. I screamed in my throat, but the sound never came out.
His weight and his pressure grew unimaginable, burning my face. A snowstorm gathered over my eyes and the pulse in my eardrums became deafening. I’m going to die, I thought, even at 3. I had no choice but to give in, but the moment could not arrive soon enough. I blacked out.
I came-to. He was gone. I knew even at 3, he had done something despicable. I felt sick, my sinuses pounding.
I wiped something horrid from my hands. Filth and shame overpowered me. Burying the memory had seemed my only option. From then on, I hated my body and I wanted to be someone else.”
How My Writing Revealed the Trauma
It seems incredible that such a terrible memory could be buried within my subconscious for almost 50 years. And yet this is exactly what my brain has done.Strangely, I have thought of that memory every day of my life, but as symbols, imaginary situations and scenes taken out of context, not as anything real.
A year after being smothered on my bed, I would see Uncle Dan’s face in my chest at the sight of my identical twin's comatose form. She had triggered the memory of seeing my Uncle’s face before I fell unconscious. I would become like Eve: comatose. But even at 4, I didn’t know who the man was and I had no access to the actual memory.
With the memory now in my conscious awareness, my past is about to fall apart. I am not who I thought I was and I am about to enter a strange and frightening landscape. Further questions naturally arise: my lifelong intrusive thoughts. Were they in fact flashbacks? What about my childhood familiar and my secret world? I can no longer ask Mum as she passed away shortly after I retrieved the memory.
The Pushchair Chronicles: Clues in My Novels
I was soon to discover further clues to my toddlerhood within my so-called novels which I now view as ‘pushchair chronicles’. I would find anagrams of his name, anagrams of mine, evidence of a split self due to dissociation, clues to our family situation in 1968 that I didn’t know I knew. Worse, I would find descriptions of further traumas within key scenes.My lifelong childhood familiar, Aidan contains his name: Dan. How many times had my toddler ears heard Dad or Nan address my uncle as ‘hey, Dan’ or ‘Our, Dan’ as they spoke to him? Weirder, my novel, Nadia is Aidan spelled backwards.
Mind map of growing up after living a difficult toddlerhood (Mirror Image Shattered)
But this is only the beginning.
I am about to embark upon a treacherous journey that will cast further light upon my shadowy toddlerhood. The full story can be found in my book Mirror Image Shattered.
However, I have yet to discover that my artwork and my diaries would also yield clues.
Only a specific set of circumstances would have provided access to the horrific memory. I would easily have lived my life through, completely unaware that an uncle violated my three-year-old self.
Uncle Dan has been dead since 2001.
This completes the story of how I first uncovered the truth about my horrific toddlerhood.
Go back to part 9 Or start again at the prologue
About this blog
The moment I learned the truth
How I learned about my toddlerhood
My book Mirror Image Shattered
About my diaries
Links to my other articles
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