How do I know if a specific memory really happened
MeditativeCycler
Registrant
I've got a specific memory, maybe a dream, that I'm going nuts trying to decide if it really happened or if it's just a story my brain decided to tell me to traumatize me for some odd reason. The answer is probably I'll never know and I need to talk to a therapist about it, but therapy doesn't start for a while and I feel like I'm going crazy.
Ok, bit of backstory so this will make sense. My grandpa molested me repeatedly up until I was 8. My mom took me to a therapist, but the therapist decided to transfer me to another one mere minutes before I was about to tell her everything. So I buried everything. Tried to forget about it and never saw grandpa again as we moved across the country when I was 12. Nine years later, I'm talking to a friend and she tells a story about another friend that got groped in her sleep during a slumber party. This broke the dam and all these memories came flooding back. I started probing my memories, filling in gaps and recovering a bunch of stuff I had tried to forget. For a while, I strongly doubted if these memories were real. I didn't want them to be real because they were so horrifying. But, a physical scar on my body, a couple of weird fetishes and PTSD symptoms convinced me they were real.
This brings me to the dilemma. One morning, when I was about 17, a few months into this memory recovering phase, and I'm lying in bed half awake when I have this flash and a really vivid image that was like a dream.
(TW: Rape)
Here's what I saw. I was about ten years old. My soccer team was doing fund-raising selling candy bars. I'm going up and down the neighborhood selling candy bars. I get to the last house on the block and this roly-poly fat woman answers the door. She tells me that if I come inside, she'll give me a special payment for the candy bar. I go inside. There's a bit of a gap, but next thing I know, I'm in her room on her bed, naked, and she's on top of me. I feel like I'm being suffocated under her weight and I go physically limp. I disassociate until I'm floating in the room, looking down on the two of us. I don't remember her very well, but I remember that room so clearly. The brown walls, the ledge by the windows, the open space of the efficiency apartment. I just leave my body and everything gets so very very distant.
And that's all I remember. I cannot decide if this actually happened or if it was just a nightmare I made up in my mind. I have several aversions from my grandpa (I cannot stand backrubs, for example) but I can't think of any aversions from this woman, though I was forcibly disinterested in girls until I was about 15 and basically had to give myself permission to find girls interesting.
And it all just seems so unlikely. Like, a female rapist pulling a kid off the street into her place? That just doesn't happen. I've tried calling up the house on google maps and looking at it. It doesn't really seem to jog my memory. I found pictures of the interior, but the place was renovated in the late 2010 and this incident occurred (if it occurred at all) in 1990. There are times it feels like it must have happened, and times it feels like something my brain came up with because I'm normally filled with self-loathing on a pretty substantial scale.
What do I do?
Ok, bit of backstory so this will make sense. My grandpa molested me repeatedly up until I was 8. My mom took me to a therapist, but the therapist decided to transfer me to another one mere minutes before I was about to tell her everything. So I buried everything. Tried to forget about it and never saw grandpa again as we moved across the country when I was 12. Nine years later, I'm talking to a friend and she tells a story about another friend that got groped in her sleep during a slumber party. This broke the dam and all these memories came flooding back. I started probing my memories, filling in gaps and recovering a bunch of stuff I had tried to forget. For a while, I strongly doubted if these memories were real. I didn't want them to be real because they were so horrifying. But, a physical scar on my body, a couple of weird fetishes and PTSD symptoms convinced me they were real.
This brings me to the dilemma. One morning, when I was about 17, a few months into this memory recovering phase, and I'm lying in bed half awake when I have this flash and a really vivid image that was like a dream.
(TW: Rape)
Here's what I saw. I was about ten years old. My soccer team was doing fund-raising selling candy bars. I'm going up and down the neighborhood selling candy bars. I get to the last house on the block and this roly-poly fat woman answers the door. She tells me that if I come inside, she'll give me a special payment for the candy bar. I go inside. There's a bit of a gap, but next thing I know, I'm in her room on her bed, naked, and she's on top of me. I feel like I'm being suffocated under her weight and I go physically limp. I disassociate until I'm floating in the room, looking down on the two of us. I don't remember her very well, but I remember that room so clearly. The brown walls, the ledge by the windows, the open space of the efficiency apartment. I just leave my body and everything gets so very very distant.
And that's all I remember. I cannot decide if this actually happened or if it was just a nightmare I made up in my mind. I have several aversions from my grandpa (I cannot stand backrubs, for example) but I can't think of any aversions from this woman, though I was forcibly disinterested in girls until I was about 15 and basically had to give myself permission to find girls interesting.
And it all just seems so unlikely. Like, a female rapist pulling a kid off the street into her place? That just doesn't happen. I've tried calling up the house on google maps and looking at it. It doesn't really seem to jog my memory. I found pictures of the interior, but the place was renovated in the late 2010 and this incident occurred (if it occurred at all) in 1990. There are times it feels like it must have happened, and times it feels like something my brain came up with because I'm normally filled with self-loathing on a pretty substantial scale.
What do I do?
