Dreaming my father's memories
Nov. 8th, 2014 09:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avalon_storm I saw a documentary on twins this week, Two of a Kind, which has my former boss in it. She died of leukemia and I miss her both professionally and personally. We were close in the way you are with people you work with you really like, and I was privileged to be there for some of the moments of her life where she was really brave and strong at very cruel times. She taught me a lot about being a person. I miss her a lot.
But she never knew me, because she only knew our collective identity. She did not know that when I went back to work, after my father left and I came to live in my mother's system all the time, and we finished our maternity leave, I was so hungry to understand other people and find my place in the world. And that I was 15. And that I love fashion like she did, even if lots of people here don't and I don't have a lifetime of clothes like I would have if I had been picking them all along.
She really liked United States of Tara, which is a TV show about a multiple, and sometimes people thought about telling her but we also knew that it would make her really uncomfortable for a lot of reasons. But in the documentary when she was talking about being a twin and having a memory from growing up where she and her twin could not agree, at all, which twin it happened to, and some of the other twins talked about feeling like they have one soul in two bodies, I started to feel like part of the reason we connected a little was that underneath all the words and professionalism and different lives, we shared a little that difference...experiencing the world in a way that isn't explainable.
Last night I dreamt my father's memories. I don't always dream, we have some sleep problems and getting to the sleep that is dreaming and that you remember when you wake up is hard for everyone and then I don't even know if you have to be the one at the front of the body to dream? I don't know how that works. Usually if I dream it is connected to David or Trip or about things now. But last night, maybe because I was listening to Love the Way you Lie a lot yesterday, I dreamed my father's marriage. My father is in a female body, and he was married to an abusive man for a long time. If you need some kind of marker, he is in jail (although he will be out soon) for what he did to his next partner, he cut her face and he used her son as a shield with police officers and guns.
When I lived in my father's system some of the time it was fuzzier, but just like here I could access some of the common knowledge and some memories. So that is why I remember the feel of being thrown or shoved into a refrigerator, what it feels like when you hit the rounded cold sort of metal door in the middle, and then you get yanked back so hard your stomach comes into your throat, and then being on your knees and not sure if you are crying or not. I don't know if that really happened that way or any of the other things I remember...a fire back off a gravel road and friends laughing, the bad laugh that happens when something is going to happen...a room with a kind of dingy pink and green feel and hearing steps in the hall and trying to get the right face forward but knowing from the steps that there isn't one...trying to be a blank slate and just be the right person so that the right person in him will come in.
It is always strange having memories that are not mine, but mine.
Lately I have wondered how much they make me me as well. The hard part is, if you tell someone that part of who you are is choosing to be who they want, some of the time, it might bother them. So then you might have to try not to be that, as well, or at least think about it. It is pretty confusing.
But she never knew me, because she only knew our collective identity. She did not know that when I went back to work, after my father left and I came to live in my mother's system all the time, and we finished our maternity leave, I was so hungry to understand other people and find my place in the world. And that I was 15. And that I love fashion like she did, even if lots of people here don't and I don't have a lifetime of clothes like I would have if I had been picking them all along.
She really liked United States of Tara, which is a TV show about a multiple, and sometimes people thought about telling her but we also knew that it would make her really uncomfortable for a lot of reasons. But in the documentary when she was talking about being a twin and having a memory from growing up where she and her twin could not agree, at all, which twin it happened to, and some of the other twins talked about feeling like they have one soul in two bodies, I started to feel like part of the reason we connected a little was that underneath all the words and professionalism and different lives, we shared a little that difference...experiencing the world in a way that isn't explainable.
Last night I dreamt my father's memories. I don't always dream, we have some sleep problems and getting to the sleep that is dreaming and that you remember when you wake up is hard for everyone and then I don't even know if you have to be the one at the front of the body to dream? I don't know how that works. Usually if I dream it is connected to David or Trip or about things now. But last night, maybe because I was listening to Love the Way you Lie a lot yesterday, I dreamed my father's marriage. My father is in a female body, and he was married to an abusive man for a long time. If you need some kind of marker, he is in jail (although he will be out soon) for what he did to his next partner, he cut her face and he used her son as a shield with police officers and guns.
When I lived in my father's system some of the time it was fuzzier, but just like here I could access some of the common knowledge and some memories. So that is why I remember the feel of being thrown or shoved into a refrigerator, what it feels like when you hit the rounded cold sort of metal door in the middle, and then you get yanked back so hard your stomach comes into your throat, and then being on your knees and not sure if you are crying or not. I don't know if that really happened that way or any of the other things I remember...a fire back off a gravel road and friends laughing, the bad laugh that happens when something is going to happen...a room with a kind of dingy pink and green feel and hearing steps in the hall and trying to get the right face forward but knowing from the steps that there isn't one...trying to be a blank slate and just be the right person so that the right person in him will come in.
It is always strange having memories that are not mine, but mine.
Lately I have wondered how much they make me me as well. The hard part is, if you tell someone that part of who you are is choosing to be who they want, some of the time, it might bother them. So then you might have to try not to be that, as well, or at least think about it. It is pretty confusing.
