My Clients Visit Me in Nightmares

What happens when we can’t clock out?

Hope Rising
Age of Empathy

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Photo by Rinat Aidarkhan on Unsplash

As a toddler, my claim to fame was being a terrible napper. Deplorable. I still remember climbing up on the bathroom counter to reach my mother’s lipstick when I was a few moments shy of three years old and painting my face like a cat.

A reddish-pink cat, no doubt, but something reminiscent of feline, nonetheless. I hopped off of the countertop, eager to show my mother my artwork.

She was not impressed.

My mom, like parents of nap-haters everywhere, I’m sure, gleefully signed me up for afternoon kindergarten. My mother’s naptime woes ended here, but my distaste for sleeping did not.

I’m not sure how old I was when the nightmares started. My childhood memory is disjointed at best, more of a sparse photo album than a movie. As it is with many survivors of childhood trauma, recollection leaves me with more questions than answers.

But wildly enough, while I sometimes struggle to remember the actual events of my childhood, I vividly remember the dreams that haunted my elementary school nights.

A headless man glued at the neck to a ceiling with an adhesive much stronger than the Elmer’s glue in the art room. Helpless individuals boiling to death in hot oil. A coffin at the…

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Hope Rising
Age of Empathy

Mixed race and multicultural | Cat mom | Editor for Out of the Woods | I write to heal myself and others | Support me at https://ko-fi.com/aashaanna