This is a nightmare that didn’t happen. I was about 11, sleeping in my room. The door suddenly opened and my father came in. He was yelling something and he threw things, talking to himself. I hid under the comforter. I heard him walk around in my room, talking to himself, throwing stuff. Then he left.
I waited. I waited for my mother. I waited for my mother to come to check on me, comfort me. Minutes passed. Nobody came. I fell asleep crying.
I woke up in the morning. I found my stuffed animals were on the floor. One of them, a stuffed kitty my friend gave me, was almost decapitated. I didn’t understand.
I quietly went down the stairs, expecting my mom at least to explain what happened.
Nothing happened.
Nobody mentioned anything. Mom was cooking breakfast. My father was reading the newspaper or whatever. Nothing happened. I ate my breakfast and went back to my room.
That was the nightmare that didn’t happen.
But I remember that I sewed my stuffed kitty’s head back by myself, crying, saying to myself again and again, “My friend gave it to me.”
Decades and years of therapy later I confronted my father and asked what it was about.
He didn’t remember.
My mom came to me to tell that she had no idea and asked, “Your father didn’t hit you, did he?”
“No, he didn’t,” I said.
It doesn’t matter. It was not my father’s unpredictable rage that marked me. It was the absence of my mother. I learned that nobody would come for me. I didn’t want to be the scared little girl, so I became my father. “You have a temper just like your father,” my mother used to say.
Now I have many friends who are fathers. When I saw their daughter perfectly safe with their father, not hiding from them, not tensing up at the sight of them, remaining soft and smiling, I wonder how they do. It is a dream that didn’t happen to me.
Somatic Awareness 