For over 20 years, beginning when I was 9, I dreamt that I would die a tragic death when I was 36. The dreams were so vivid and insistent, that I held off on having children because I wondered if it were true. I never knew how I died but I always knew that it was violent and tragic. I also had a parallel dream that I would call 911 and couldn't get through for various reasons: busy signal, no connection, they couldn't hear me, it would ring and ring. Sometimes the 911 call was related to a man hiding in a field after trying to kidnap someone and I figured it was the field around the corner from my mom's house. Eventually that dream went away before the death dream finally also disappeared.
All my life I periodically went to counselors to discuss my anxiety about dying when I was 36. They all convinced me that everyone has fear of death but in my heart something just didn't feel right. I started going to a counselor when I was 35 because I had so much anxiety about dying. At the time my boyfriend wanted to have children and my counselor suggested that perhaps I always knew deep inside my heart that I would try to have children at 35 and my dream symbolized death of my old life and the beginning of a new era. My 36th birthday arrived and nothing bad happened for a few months so the anxiety slowly started to subside.
Eventually my whole world imploded and fell apart, spiraling me into years of multiple hells. Every time I got on my feet from one thing, something else knocked me down and kicked me when I was down. At one point my worst fears came true while I laid on the floor, holding my front door shut with my feet while a drug-crazed man tried to kick it in, yelling that he would kill me if I didn't open the door to help him with his car. I called 911 and the dispatcher said that they had no officers able to assist because there had been an officer involved shooting. The dispatcher told me that she couldn't give me advice but that she could hear that the man was threatening to kill me and I was in my right to defend myself. Later I found out that the man had parked his car in the middle of a field across the street from my house, claiming to police that he broke down there. I chalked it up to coincidence that I dreamt for years as a child about calling 911 and also about a man hiding in a field.
For years now, I've dreamt every once in a while about the policer officer who, when looking at my driver's license said, "Happy birthday, by the way. Huh, so much for that". And for over a year I dream about the district attorney telling me that the police department failed me and other people in more ways than one until the sheriff department finally stepped in. And then there are dreams about being re-victimized and ran through the mud on the witness stand.
Somewhere along the way my counselor asked me for the exact date of when my world imploded. I found out that it was at 11:59 p.m. on the night before my 37th birthday. My life fell apart one minute before I turned 37 years old. I'm never going to forget how many chills ran through my body when the counselor said, "So your whole world imploded on the last minute of you being 36, when all your life you waited to die when you turned 36 years old. Perhaps it's a coincidence but I'm inclined to think that it's due to fate and that you always knew that something would drastically change your life. You just predicted the wrong timing, thinking you would die at the beginning of 36 but not knowing you'd have a metaphorical death at the end of 36". Could I really have had a 20 year presentiment that something drastic would happen in my life when I was 36? Could I really have known for over 20 years that I would call the police and they wouldn't be able to help me? Or, are these just random coincidences??
It's easy to attribute coincidence to many things but ever since then I haven't been able to shake the idea that perhaps it is all related to fate. Perhaps I knew all along that my life as I knew it would change, that the old me would die and that a new me would begin. Since that moment, on the last minute of the 36th year of my life, my life imploded into a nightmare of repeated tragedies and traumas that beat the life out of me. I thought I was completely broken at one point and would never emotionally recover. Perhaps all the pain, anxiety, trauma, depression, betrayal, and fear have all been worth it somehow because it was all ultimately meant to be. It's scary to wonder if something is much more than just a coincidence because it's as scary as heck to feel that I might have instinctively known that something was meant to happen in my life before it happened. So, I keep convincing myself that it's all a big coincidence even when that voice in my head says that nothing is ever a coincidence.
For five years I have walked around like a zombie, not knowing who I am anymore and where I am going. I have felt numb and I have grieved deeply. I've been in survival mode, holding it together at work but pretty much letting my personal life fall apart. I've been abandoned or betrayed by almost every person that I previously loved. I was kicked while I was down. Since the beginning of my trauma, my counselor told me that it would take me years to recover because I have had multiple traumas and that I should be patient and compassionate with myself. Every birthday I have relived the night that my world fell apart, reliving the pain of the past for weeks before and after my birthday. I missed my 40th birthday as I relived the beginning of my trauma. Every birthday I hide like a hermit and avoid doing anything special because it's just been too painful for me to process. Not to mention all the years that I lost leading up to my 36th birthday, always afraid of it. I have lost so many years of my life.
Every year I have written in my journal that this is going to be the year that I get my life together and move forward. But it's never been the year, although I slowly get better. I get stronger every month. But the past few weeks I have been fighting off the pain that I typically go through around the time of my birthday. For weeks I have felt as if I am in a funk, and I feel sensitive and raw. I cry often and have been allowing myself to cry as much as I need to because I held it all in and didn't cry at all for years. I am slowly starting to feel a release.
This year will be the 5 year anniversary of the night my world fell apart. I recently told someone that I finally want to mark a new era, a new 5 year period to celebrate the beginning of my life on my upcoming birthday this year. I told the person that I wanted to go to the mineral hot springs on my birthday this year because the indigenous peoples in the desert have always said that they are healing waters and I want to rebirth myself into having a more happy tradition. I want to own my own birthday again instead of the tragic memories robbing me of my own day. I want to see this day as the beginning of my life, as opposed to the day that my life fell apart. I want to cultivate a new mindset.
So that is what I am going to do. And I'm going to do it alone. I appreciate the few people who stuck around and helped me through the fire. But most of the journey I've had to face on my own and no one can help me conquer the bad memories that hold me down. I will be celebrating this 5 year anniversary alone, with things that make me happy. My world fell apart while I was alone and I want to go into a new era alone so that I depend on myself. One of the most painful things over the past 5 years has been that I depended on people emotionally who ended up failing me, so I want to start a new era just depending on myself. I can't wait for a new era to begin, no matter how rough the growing pains are!
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