Fighting for catharsis

Disassembling a recurring dream

Content warning: sexual violence

Other note: I will start putting the song or songs on my mind during the time in some of my future posts.

Soundtrack: “Pals” by Young Fathers, from the “28 Years Later” soundtrack

It was a dream that has occasionally popped up for at least the past four months, though I cannot be certain. And it is something that my subconscious conjures from the mess of my thoughts and memories, like a bad amalgamated image produced by a prompt from a dollar store AI program.

First, I will give some personal details to provide some context.

Factor One: Mom. My mother is currently on her third marriage (I don’t say this in any moral judgment, just for objective context). The first was to my biological father, whom I can tell she still loves (though he is also on his third marriage); this ended when I was around 4. The second was to a soldier, adulterous, abusive emotionally and on rare occasions physically; this went from when I was 5 to about 16. She has been married almost twenty years now, married just before I graduated high school. I severed ties with her about two years ago, after being done with her narcissism and lack of respect.

Factor Two: Dad. My father has been an on-again off-again chronic drug user. This instability and unreliability led to my mother divorcing him and taking me and my brother, though my brother and I would go visit him during the summer per custody agreement. He stayed out of jail at least during his second marriage, which lasted about a year less than my mom’s second marriage. That set him off to a life hitting the streets constantly for drugs, becoming unreliable, and dipping in and out of jail over the past 20+ years. Again, parallel to my mom, he eventually remarried, though this stepmom has not been the most healthy, buying his “born again” Christian BS he’s been spouting since before I was a twinkle in his eye. I used to look up to him so much as a teenager through my adult years, through the lens of Christianity and its promise of redemption. I severed ties with him about a year and a half before my estrangement to my mom.

Factor Three: my first stepdad, my mom’s second marriage, or as I sometimes to refer to him, my ex-stepdad. As mentioned, he served twenty years in the Army, helped raise me most of my childhood, was emotionally abusive to my mom and a major misogynist cheater. According to my mom, and aligning with some memories (meaning I don’t doubt it), he and some fellow soldiers gang-raped a local woman when I was in middle school, almost killed himself when he realized he was in serious trouble (I accidentally heard that conversation one night), then he and his buddies pushed the story that it was consensual, and the victim caved and agreed to that narrative. Cut to 4 years ago, he was fired from the sheriffs department and sentenced to a few years in jail for sexually assaulting female inmates. He’s still in prison as of now. My mother has no love for him, and the only connection to him is the son they share.

Having laid all of that out, here is the specific dream I had last night.

I was still living at home with my mom, as a teenager/dependent, though through dream logic, most of the past 30+ year history of things was still in play. My ex-stepdad was out of jail, and my mom remarried him and was in love with him again. Just like other dreams with this scenario, I was dreading him being at home, just like we dreaded him returning home from a deployment or field training when I was in elementary school. I felt embarrassed that all the trash I talked of him as an adult, I had to stop, at least to his face for the time being, since I was afraid of immediate consequences. In the dream, I held it together around him, but at some point, I finally went off on my mom. How she was reneging on her initial decision to divorce him (which did happen in real life initially), how she knew he was a rapist and abusive, that he would never change. But she told me she was in love with him, that this was different.

I think some of this was stirred up a few days ago when, after feeling past the trauma, I decided to finally read some diaries my mother wrote to me during the first few years of my life, and in these entries I was reminded of the deep love she had and likely still has for my father.

I believe this mixed with some other thoughts to form a metaphor on a different matter.

Like I mentioned at the beginning, I have been having some form of this dream for a while now, and this one felt poignant enough to write up.

I find it cathartic and somewhat empowering to write about personal history like this.

If you made it this far, I appreciate you taking the time to read.

Thanks for dropping by.

Until later,

DC