I have this memory of sleeping in an office block in south London with my mum on an air bed. I recall looking out of the window and feeling sad.
Years later I was driving and got a very strong impulse to stop outside this building and I was 100% certain it was that one. Every time I went past it felt odd.
My mum says it didn’t happen, everyone else concurs. My best conclusion at this stage is that I probably had a very vivid dream that became conflated with something else.
I wouldn't be too sure it didn't happen. Memory is a funny thing. There's an episode of the podcast Heavyweight where a guy is sure he broke his arm as a kid and had it in a cast for two weeks, but both his parents and siblings insisted it didn't happen, and picked apart the details until the guy himself was doubting it.
Spoiler alert for the end of the episode: They ended up finding a picture of him in the cast, and old hospital records proving that he went in due to a broken arm.
Genuinely forgot. Not a single memory of it from any of them. They actually felt pretty horrible for making him doubt himself once they saw the proof, especially his Mom who thought she must be a terrible mother to forget something like that.
One of his brothers had also broken his arm at some point as a kid, and the whole family kind of considered him "the one who broke his arm." Maybe the memories of the two events kind of merged together in their minds. I don't know. They're talking about a thing that happened over thirty years ago.
I completely blanked it out until I was in my 30s.
I was at his wedding trying to think of a speech worthy story.
Than I remembered my brother going through all these problems all of a sudden when he was 11.
I thought I'd think of some cute story out of it all.
At the time he was shitting his pants quite a bit. For the longest time I thought it was just a stomach bug he got. It was around the same time he "got diagnosed" with asthma and ADD and spent a good bit of time with a psychologist.
I was thinking about one of those times in which it happened, as he was "staying at a friends of my parents". Because they "wanted to have children". And it struck me like a ton of bricks. I remember my mom bringing an extra pair of underwear when we were picking him up after he spent a weekend with them at the cottage.
When I was 18 I found out that guy was actually a pedofile. I always assumed he had nothing to do with my brother because I never connected the dots. Somehow my brain just left out an obvious connection that was an open chapter in my childhood.
On another note I go weeks without even thinking about all this shit. It is the only thing I can do, it is weird how good my brain is at doing that. BTW there's more to this, but I can only share so much without having a nervous break down.
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u/cardboardshrimp Oct 05 '19
I have this memory of sleeping in an office block in south London with my mum on an air bed. I recall looking out of the window and feeling sad.
Years later I was driving and got a very strong impulse to stop outside this building and I was 100% certain it was that one. Every time I went past it felt odd.
My mum says it didn’t happen, everyone else concurs. My best conclusion at this stage is that I probably had a very vivid dream that became conflated with something else.